The Shock Doctrine: Waterstones Reading the 21st Century

In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein blows apart the myth that the global free market triumphed through democratic consent. Instead, she reveals how the most brutal economic policies of the past fifty years — from Pinochet's Chile to post-invasion Iraq, from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the Asian financial crisis — were rammed through in moments of collective shock, when populations were too disoriented to resist.

Klein calls it 'disaster capitalism': the deliberate exploitation of crises to push through radical privatisation, deregulation, and cuts to social spending that would be politically impossible under normal circumstances. It's a pattern repeated across continents and decades, driven by the economic ideology of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School.

Part investigative journalism, part political history, The Shock Doctrine is one of the most important books of the 21st century — essential reading for understanding how power really works.