Naomi Klein: Disaster Capitalism October 16, 2008

Naomi Klein, Journalist, Syndicated Columnist; Author, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

In conversation with Stephen Elliott, Author; Member, San Francisco Writers' Grotto; Former Wallace Stegner Fellow, Stanford University; Founder, The Progressive Reading Series

From the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to the unending war in Iraq, award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Klein chronicles the rise of free-market policies and how they have been used to capitalize on disaster. Are the communities that have been struck by tragedy being manipulated by our current politics and economics for profitable gain? Klein challenges the ideology of the free market revolution and argues that it is not a peaceful global movement.

Blue Room, Commonwealth Club
Tickets are $8 for Commonwealth Club members, $15 non-members, $7 students (with valid ID).

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of the New York Times and international bestseller, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Published worldwide in September 2007, The Shock Doctrine is set to be translated into 25 languages to date. The six minute companion film, created by Alfonso Cuaron, director of Children of Men, was an Official Selection of the 2007 Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals and was a viral phenomenon, downloaded over a million times.

Her previous book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies was also an international bestseller, translated into over 28 languages with more than a million copies in print. A collection of her work, Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate was published in 2002.

Naomi Klein writes a regular column for The Nation and The Guardian that is syndicated internationally by The New York Times Syndicate. In 2004, her reporting from Iraq for Harper’s Magazine won the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. In 2004, she released The Take, a feature documentary about Argentina’s occupied factories, co-produced with director Avi Lewis. The film was an official selection of the Venice Biennale and won the Best Documentary Jury Prize at the American Film Institute’s Film Festival in Los Angeles.

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