Reviews tagging 'Torture'

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein

15 reviews

iarlais's review against another edition

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challenging dark hopeful informative inspiring sad tense medium-paced

5.0

In my opinion, this is more than a book - it's an intense, superbly researched and thoroughly intriguing piece that focuses on some of the most dramatic and important events of the late 20th Century. This work of art is astonishing from the get-go, the level of detail given to every paragraph and story is indescribable. It tells horrifying and crushing tales, yet closes out its overall story in a beautiful and hopeful manner. It feels like it takes you on a journey through time and Earth as you become familiar with the tragedies that befell countless people, stories that are and always will be worth hearing. I've been trying with this review, but I genuinely lack the words to describe how I feel.

My personal book of the year.
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littlebutton's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative slow-paced

4.25

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emmameetsearth's review against another edition

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challenging informative sad slow-paced

4.0

The Guardian described this as 'devastating' and that there persists a quasi-religious faith in free markets (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/sep/15/politics). Exploring themes including

  • Crisis opportunism
  • Voodoo politics
  • Nations inheriting debt from oppressors
  • Corporatism
  • Volatility of global economy - Crisis is built on crisis. 

  "An economic system that requires constant growth, while bucking almost all serious attempts at environmental regulation, generates a steady stream of disasters all on its own, whether military, ecological or financial. The appetite for easy, short-term profits offered by purely speculative investment has turned the stock, currency and real estate markets into crisis-creation machines, as the Asian financial crisis, the Mexican peso crisis and the dotcom collapse all demonstrate." 

The chapter on the 2003 Iraq war and pinochet's reign of terror really hit me.
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anil's review

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dark informative tense slow-paced

4.0

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zombiezami's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative reflective tense slow-paced

4.75

Klein masterfully ties a lot of seemingly disparate events together in a clear and understandable way. Since so many of the events she describes happened either right before I was born or when I was a small child, I am grateful to have this context, since I didn't learn most of this in school. I only wish that she had commented more on the role of trade agreements. 
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