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stwawbee's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
jimbowen0306's review against another edition
3.0
This book outlines the business practices of big business, with a particular emphasis on how they frame themselves so that they became more accessible to their consumers. The chapter about the business practices of Starbucks, and why there seem to be so many of the damn things, is particularly memorable.
The book rose to prominence when a certain type of anti-globalisation activist seemed to quote it extensively. They might not have read it (though I suspect their leaders have), but it certainly became an iconic thing to own within that community.
I found the book somewhat irritating to be honest. It's strong on identifying the problem, but is less effective at identifying a solution. As often as not I found myself thinking "What's the alternative?" and "I can see why people don't like it, but what do we do instead?" as I read the book. I got no sense as to where the "line in the sand" was for Miss Klein. There's an inevitable forward momentum to these sorts of things, and I didn't get any sense of the stage at which a company too big or too global from the book. Because of this, I only gave it 3 stars.
The book rose to prominence when a certain type of anti-globalisation activist seemed to quote it extensively. They might not have read it (though I suspect their leaders have), but it certainly became an iconic thing to own within that community.
I found the book somewhat irritating to be honest. It's strong on identifying the problem, but is less effective at identifying a solution. As often as not I found myself thinking "What's the alternative?" and "I can see why people don't like it, but what do we do instead?" as I read the book. I got no sense as to where the "line in the sand" was for Miss Klein. There's an inevitable forward momentum to these sorts of things, and I didn't get any sense of the stage at which a company too big or too global from the book. Because of this, I only gave it 3 stars.
misaqi's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Very information-packed book. The author made some very interesting points.
kimchifairy's review against another edition
Very good, with all of Klein's usual lucidity of prose and depth of research. I didn't read it all, but only because it feels rather dated now: the relationship between corporate power and political resistance underwent a massive upheaval with the rise of the information age, and Klein could only go so far in anticipating this. It's excellently covered in some of her later work though.
khornstein1's review against another edition
2.0
I finally finished listening to this on Audible. The audio version is pretty bad; it's like listening to a lot of dry, out-of-date info being delivered by Siri.
I can't remember why I was interested in this one: I think I was interested in Naomi Klein and some of her more recent writing but thought I should read or listen to this first. This book is now 20 years old and thus the problem with reading nonfiction that is timely at the time but way less so now. References to AOL, the World Trade Center and Borders exploiting its workers make the book appear cutely antique at best, and annoyingly out-of-touch at worst.
The Good News: some things have gotten better (child labor, somewhat), economic growth in other countries (a lot). Some things have become way worse: the nature of work in the U.S., increased automation and outsourcing, retail monopolies like Amazon etc. etc. Didn't Daniel Gilbert or someone talk about this? The future is now...and in many ways can never be predicted.
I did have fun thinking about several items of clothing I owned in 1999 while listening, and if you're interested in what people were worried about in the 90's or what people were politically active round, it may be worth a skim.
I can't remember why I was interested in this one: I think I was interested in Naomi Klein and some of her more recent writing but thought I should read or listen to this first. This book is now 20 years old and thus the problem with reading nonfiction that is timely at the time but way less so now. References to AOL, the World Trade Center and Borders exploiting its workers make the book appear cutely antique at best, and annoyingly out-of-touch at worst.
The Good News: some things have gotten better (child labor, somewhat), economic growth in other countries (a lot). Some things have become way worse: the nature of work in the U.S., increased automation and outsourcing, retail monopolies like Amazon etc. etc. Didn't Daniel Gilbert or someone talk about this? The future is now...and in many ways can never be predicted.
I did have fun thinking about several items of clothing I owned in 1999 while listening, and if you're interested in what people were worried about in the 90's or what people were politically active round, it may be worth a skim.
allie8973's review against another edition
Skimmed the important chapters but didn't get much out of it because yeah it's fucking depressing and also people have been talking about this for a while. But at the time I could see it being good