The Shock Doctrine
By Naomi Klein

I've been friends with Naomi for a while, and I was lucky enough to read this as a galley, before it was published. I think that she has the same ferocity as Hunter—a much different aesthetic and different goals, but they are both people who are going to look at hard truths. This is an alternate history of the past 35 years. Her position is that there has been a very open ideological war against the New Deal. She explores how "shocks" such as Hurricane Katrina or political upheaval in South America or Eastern Europe are seen as opportunities by some politicians and economists to engage in free-market fundamentalism. She calls it the disaster capitalism complex, and she shows how that actually rigs markets for the rich. What Naomi does so well is to put corruption scandals into a broader context. To see the world with that kind of clarity and courage and then to chronicle it, I think, is breathtaking.