Around the world in Britain, the United States, Asia and the Middle East, there are people with power who are cashing in on chaos; exploiting bloodshed and catastrophe to brutally remake our world in their image. They are the shock doctors. Thrilling and revelatory, "The Shock Doctrine" cracks open the secret history of our era. Exposing these global profiteers, Naomi Klein discovered information and connections that shocked even her about how comprehensively the shock doctors' beliefs now dominate our world - and how this domination has been achieved. Raking in billions out of the tsunami, plundering Russia, exploiting Iraq - this is the chilling tale of how a few are making a killing while more are getting killed.

About the Author

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, author and filmmaker. The Shock Doctrine has been translated into more than twenty languages. It was a hardback bestseller in Canada, the United States, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden, nominated for multiple awards including the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the New York Public Library Bernstein Award for Journalism. Naomi Klein writes an internationally syndicated column for The Guardian and The Nation and reported from Iraq for Harper's magazine. In 2004, she released The Take, a feature documentary about Argentina's occupied factories, co-produced with director Avi Lewis. She is a former Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics and holds an honorary Doctor of Civil Laws from the University of King's College, Nova Scotia. Her first book was the international bestseller No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, called "a movement bible" by The New York Times.

Reviews

The neo-liberal economic policies-privatization, free trade, slashed social spending-that the "Chicago School" and the economist Milton Friedman have foisted on the world are catastrophic in two senses, argues this vigorous polemic. Because their results are disastrous-depressions, mass poverty, private corporations looting public wealth, by the author's accounting-their means must be cataclysmic, dependent on political upheavals and natural disasters as coercive pretexts for free-market "reforms" the public would normally reject. Journalist Klein (No Logo) chronicles decades of such disasters, including the Chicago School makeovers launched by South American coups; the corrupt sale of Russia's state economy to oligarchs following the collapse of the Soviet Union; the privatization of New Orleans's public schools after Katrina; and the seizure of wrecked fishing villages by resort developers after the Asian tsunami. Klein's economic and political analyses are not always meticulous. Likening free-market "shock therapies" to electroshock torture, she conflates every misdeed of right-wing dictatorships with their economic programs and paints a too simplistic picture of the Iraq conflict as a struggle over American-imposed neo-liberalism. Still, much of her critique hits home, as she demonstrates how free-market ideologues welcome, and provoke, the collapse of other people's economies. The result is a powerful populist indictment of economic orthodoxy. (Sept.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Impassioned, hugely informative, wonderfully controversial, and scary as hell John le Carre Packed with thinking dynamite ... a book to be read everywhere John Berger If you read only one non-fiction book this year, make it this one -- , Books Of The Year Metro There are few books that really help us understand the present. The Shock Doctrine is one of those books -- John Gray Guardian Lucid, calm, impeccably researched, gorgeously readable -- , Books Of The Year Observer A brilliant, brave and terrifying book Arundhati Roy Powerful ... epic ... dramatic Daily Telegraph A brilliant book written with a perfectly distilled anger, channelled through hard fact. She has indeed surpassed No Logo Independent Excoriating ... passionate and informed ... Her prose packs a punch Scotsman

Klein argues that from Russia to Iraq to post-Katrina New Orleans, people reeling from tragedy have been further assaulted by free-market "shock-treatment" aimed at helping big corporations only. With a national tour. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.