"... and so Milton Friedman walked into the flames, sprouted horns and a tail, and chuckled sinisterly to himself about the destruction he had wrought." Naomi Klein would have been better to have ended her well researched but utterly unconvincing tome in this way, as her central premise - that Friedman and the Chicago School of monetarist economists are responsible for most of the world's evils the past 40 years - is utter fiction.

Klein has meticulously footnoted (nearly 1,000) her work, drawing extensively from the past four decades of press, and recounts in chilling detail the abuses and horrors of that period's economic and political upheaval, and of its personal suffering (torture including electric shocks): Latin America, including the dictatorships of Argentina and Chile; Eastern Europe, including Poland and Russia's transitions to democracy; Asia, including Indonesia's Suharto era and China's Tiananmen Square massacre; the transition from apartheid in South Africa; and even some events in the US (Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans) and the UK (coal miners' strike and the Falklands war).

It's hard to imagine a common thread between these events, but Klein asserts that they all share the "Shock Doctrine"; the forced imposition of major societal change based on events so dramatic the populace loses all resistance. These events may be natural disasters (Katrina), political revolutions (both too and from democracy), or state sponsored terror (civilian disappearances and torture), but in each case their common element is Friedman's economic policies which were designed to cause or enhance the "shock".

In Klein's view, the Chicago School economic policies ("radical free markets" in her words) are directly responsible for the longevity of dictatorships (Pinochet), the quick demise of nascent democratic governments (Poland, Russia), the economic hardships of working people (everywhere), the increasing inequity between wealthy and poor (everywhere), and the transfer of wealth from sovereign countries to western multinational companies (no mention of the opposite via soveriegn wealth funds).

Unfortunately Klein spends very little time on the Monetarists' economic underpinnings, why they believed theirs was the best economic policy, how it differed from Keynes' views (who she refers to often, but again with very little economic insight), or what economic policies she would prescribe instead. This book ends up as just a litany of the world's evils. Klein is also inconsistent in her views. She rails against the IMF for loaning funds irresponsibly to developing nations, but later complains when it doesn't lend funds to other countries. She points out the terrible impact of high inflation, then complains about the high interest rate policies implemented to combat it.

There's no denying the terrible events during this period, that economic policies played a major role and that those same policies may drive economic growth to the benefit of the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor. As a recounting of this history, "The Shock Doctrine" delivers the goods. As a cogent argument to support a thesis, the book is a complete failure. For a more compelling, thoughtful and believable critique of Friedman, see Hyman Minsky's "Stabilizing an Unstable Economy", which is all thought and no news clippings.