A decorative banner featuring Nish Kumar and a collage of images related to politics.

Article Header – Politics

Features

The Penguin books that shaped our political understanding

How To Change Everything

'Naomi Klein's work has always moved and guided me. She is the great chronicler of our age of climate emergency, an inspirer of generations' - GRETA THUNBERG 
 
The first book for younger readers by internationally bestselling social activist Naomi Klein: the most authoritative and inspiring book on climate change for young people yet. 
 
Warming seas. Superstorms. Fires in the Amazon. The effects of climate change are all around us. 
 
Reforestation. School-strikes for climate change. Young people are saving the world and you can join them because you deserve better. 
 
Are you ready to change everything? 
 
Includes notes on the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020, and how you can get involved to make the world a safer and better place. 
 
From the Great Barrier Reef to Hurricane Katrina to school environmental policies to Greta Thunberg - climate change impacts every aspect of the world you live in and you have the power to lead the way by enacting change. 
 
Internationally bestselling author of The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein, with award-winning children's science writer Rebecca Stefoff, gives a powerful picture of why and how the planet is changing, providing effective tools for action so that YOU really can make a difference.

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker, and the best-selling author of Doppelganger, No Logo, The Shock Doctrine and other acclaimed books, which have been translated into 35 languages. She is associate professor of geography and codirector of the Centre for Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia, and writes a regular column for the Guardian. Doppelganger was the winner of the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction and named one of the ten best books of the year by New York magazine, Slate, and Time.

'Young people are not just part of the climate change movement. They are leading the way. Will you be one of them?' 
 
Forget everything you think you know about climate change. Klein presents her urgent message about saving the environment by asking three simple questions: Where are we? How did we get here? What happens next? 
 
From the Great Barrier Reef to Hurricane Katrina to school environmental policies to Greta Thunberg - climate change impacts every aspect of the world you live in. 
 
How to Change Everything will provide readers with clear information about how our planet is changing, but also, more importantly, with inspiration, ideas, and tools for action. Because young people can help build a better future. Young people can help change everything.

Hot Money

In twenty short books, Penguin brings you the classics of the environmental movement. 
 
In Hot Money Naomi Klein lays out the evidence that deregulated capitalism is waging war on the climate, and shows that, in order to stop the damage, we must change everything we think about how our world is run. 
 
Over the past 75 years, a new canon has emerged. As life on Earth has become irrevocably altered by humans, visionary thinkers around the world have raised their voices to defend the planet, and affirm our place at the heart of its restoration. Their words have endured through the decades, becoming the classics of a movement. Together, these books show the richness of environmental thought, and point the way to a fairer, saner, greener world.

Naomi Klein is the award-winning author of international bestsellers including This Changes Everything, The Shock Doctrine, No Logo, No Is Not Enough, and On Fire, which have been published in more than thirty-five languages. She is an associate professor in the department of geography at the University of British Columbia, the founding co-director of UBC's Centre of Climate Justice, and an honorary professor of Media and Climate at Rutgers University. Her writing has appeared in leading publications around the world, and she has just launched a regular column for The Guardian.

Over the past 75 years, a new canon has emerged. As humans have driven the living planet to the brink of collapse, visionary thinkers around the world have raised their voices to defend it. Their words have endured, becoming the classics that define the environmental movement today. 
 
Naomi Klein lays out the evidence that deregulated capitalism is waging war on the climate, and shows that, in order to stop the damage, we must change everything we think about how our world is run.

The Burning Case for a Green New Deal

On Fire

'Naomi Klein's work has always moved and guided me. She is the great chronicler of our age of climate emergency, an inspirer of generations' - Greta Thunberg 
 
For more than twenty years Naomi Klein's books have defined our era, chronicling the exploitation of people and the planet and demanding justice. On Fire gathers for the first time more than a decade of her impassioned writing from the frontline of climate breakdown, and pairs it with new material on the staggeringly high stakes of what we choose to do next. 
 
Here is Klein at her most prophetic and philosophical, investigating the climate crisis not only as a profound political challenge but also as a spiritual and imaginative one. Delving into topics ranging from the clash between ecological time and our culture of 'perpetual now,' to rising white supremacy and fortressed borders as a form of 'climate barbarism,' this is a rousing call to action for a planet on the brink. 
 
With dispatches from the ghostly Great Barrier Reef, the smoke-choked skies of the Pacific Northwest, post-hurricane Puerto Rico and a Vatican attempting an unprecedented 'ecological conversion,' Klein makes the case that we will rise to the existential challenge of climate change only if we are willing to transform the systems that produced this crisis. 
 
This is the fight for our lives. On Fire captures the burning urgency of the climate crisis, as well as the energy of a rising political movement demanding change now.

Naomi Klein's work has always moved and guided me. She is the great chronicler of our age of climate emergency, an inspirer of generations

Naomi Klein applies her fine, fierce and meticulous mind to the greatest, most urgent questions of our times. . . . I count her among the most inspirational political thinkers in the world today.

Naomi is like a great doctor - she can diagnose problems nobody else sees.

Naomi Klein is a precious gift: every time I read her words, my heart leaps from sadness and anger to action. She takes us deep, down to the roots of what is wrong - and then up, up to a height from which we can see what must be done. Everything we love is at stake now: these writings are our best and brightest hope.

A critically important thought-leader in these perilous times, a necessary voice as a courageous movement of movements rises from the ashes.

Michelle Alexander, author of THE NEW JIM CROW

An invigorating message of climate hope through social transformation. Bring on the revolution.

In On Fire, the longstanding critic of corporate globalisation argues for a much more comprehensive economic reboot ... a long-lensed critique about humanity's relationship to nature.

A hopeful vision of the future ... In these extraordinary times it should appeal to a new set of readers looking for extreme solutions to match the extremity of the crisis. This is Klein doing what she does best: 'not being polite and not playing by the rules'.

A powerful and righteous blast against defeatism.

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of the international bestsellers No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate, and No Is Not Enough: Defeating the New Shock Politics. In 2017 she joined The Intercept as Senior Correspondent. Recent articles have also appeared in the Guardian, The Nation, The New York Times, the New Yorker and Le Monde. In November 2016 she was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in Australia.

For more than twenty years, Naomi Klein has been the foremost chronicler of the economic war waged on both people and planet - and an unapologetic champion of a sweeping environmental agenda with justice at its centre. On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal gathers for the first time more than a decade of her impassioned writing, and pairs it with new material on the staggeringly high stakes of our immediate political and economic choices. 
 
With reports spanning from the ghostly Great Barrier Reef to the smoke-choked skies of the Pacific Northwest, to post-hurricane Puerto Rico, to a Vatican attempting an unprecedented 'ecological conversion', Klein makes the case that we will rise to the existential challenge of climate change only if we are willing to transform the systems that produced this crisis. 
 
An expansive, far-ranging exploration that sees the battle for a greener world as indistinguishable from the fight for our lives, On Fire captures the burning urgency of the climate crisis, as well as the fiery energy of a rising political movement demanding a catalytic Green New Deal.

No Logo

Penguin presents No Logo by Naomi Klein, read by Nicola Barber 
 
 
No logo employs journalistic savvy and personal testament to detail the insidious practices and far-reaching effects of corporate marketing - and the powerful potential of a growing activist sect that will surely alter the course of the 21st Century. This is an infuriating, inspiring, and altogether pioneering work of cultural criticism that investigates money, marketing and the anti-corporate movement. 
 
 
As global corporations compete for the hearts and wallets of consumers who not only buy their products but willingly advertise them from head to toe a new generation has begun to battle consumerism with its own best weapons. 
 
 
in this provocative study we learn how the Nike swoosh has changed from an athletic, status-symbol to a metaphor for sweatshop labour, how teenaged McDonald's workers are risking their jobs to join the Teamsters, and how culture jammers utilise spray paint, computer hacking acumen and anti-propagandist wordplay to undercut the slogans and meanings of billboard ads.

A rare thing in political writing: both rousing and profoundly sensible

Naomi Klein anatomises the roots of Trump in the already dystopian world of corporate-ruled America and predicts the "end run around democracy". A clear and readable guide to action

Klein moves beyond mere outrage and hand-wringing to offer a practical manifesto for opposition

As accessible as it is brilliant, No is Not Enough is an essential blueprint for a worldwide counterattack

An ordinary person's guide to hope. Read this book

Naomi Klein's new book incites us brilliantly to interweave our No with a programmatic Yes. A manual for emancipation

Magnificent ... a courageous coruscating counterspell

Who better than Naomi to make sense of this madness, and help us find a way out? A top-of-the-stack must read

Naomi is like a great doctor - she can diagnose problems nobody else sees

Naomi Klein constructs a common story that allows us to sustain the effects of being shocked. We can act upon that, with intelligence and happiness, to recover our world

If you're wondering how Naomi Klein has managed to produce an essential and gripping book so early in the Trump presidency, it's because she's spent her whole intellectual life preparing for just this moment. Trump is the ultimate logo. Every day we watch him try to exploit yet another shock to the system. So this is the book to read - not just the first word on Trump, but in powerful ways the last word as well

Bill McKibben, author of RADIO FREE VERMONT

A genuine page-turner - highly engaging and provocative - and provides a fascinating lens through which we can view our current moment. Klein is not preaching to the choir, but framing the moment, connecting necessary dots, and outlining the challenge that lies ahead in clear terms that anyone can understand

No Is Not Enough is the accumulation of years of brilliant and layered analysis applied with lightning precision to an understanding of how we got to Trump, and how we can use this moment to bring about another system and world

Eve Ensler, author of IN THE BODY OF THE WORLD

Naomi Klein has written a compelling book that we all need to read and act on. No Is Not Enough is an essential handbook for all people, especially young people, who want to understand the economic, social, and political forces that produced the current crisis we are facing - and how we can effectively organize to win a better world

Defeating the New Shock Politics

No Is Not Enough

**The New York Times and Sunday Times Bestseller** 
 
'An ordinary person's guide to hope. Read this book' Arundhati Roy 
'As accessible as it is brilliant' Owen Jones 
'A genuine page turner' Michelle Alexander 
 
Naomi Klein - award-winning journalist, bestselling author of No Logo, The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything, scourge of brand bullies and corporate liars - gives us the toolkit we need to survive our surreal, shocking age. 
 
'This is a look at how we arrived at this surreal political moment, how to keep it from getting a lot worse, and how, if we keep our heads, we can flip the script.' 
 
Remember when love was supposed to Trump hate? Remember when the oil companies and bankers seemed to be running scared? What the hell happened? And what can we do about it? Naomi Klein shows us how we got here, and how we can make things better. 
 
No Is Not Enough reveals, among other things, that the disorientation we're feeling is deliberate. That around the world, shock political tactics are being used to generate crisis after crisis, designed to force through policies that will destroy people, the environment, the economy and our security. That extremism isn't a freak event - it's a toxic cocktail of our times. 
 
From how to trash the Trump megabrand to the art of reclaiming the populist argument, Naomi Klein shows all of us how we can break the spell and win the world we need. Don't let them get away with it. 
 
'Who better than Naomi to make sense of this madness, and help us find a way out? A top-of-the-stack must read' Michael Stipe 
 
'Naomi Klein's new book incites us brilliantly to interweave our No with a programmatic Yes. A manual for emancipation' Yanis Varoufakis 
 
'Magnificent ... a courageous coruscating counterspell' Junot Díaz

Naomi Klein's new study in shock politics is a warning of the enormous toxic potential of the Trump presidency and a call to oppose it. Refusal needs to turn into resistance

Like so many of my generation, I've been a reader of Naomi Klein's since the late 90s, always finding something to learn from her rigorous reporting and thoughtful analysis

Capitalism vs. the Climate

This Changes Everything

Naomi Klein, author of the #1 international bestsellers, The Shock Doctrine and No Logo, returns with This Changes Everything, a must-read on how the climate crisis needs to spur transformational political change 
 
Forget everything you think you know about global warming. It's not about carbon - it's about capitalism. The good news is that we can seize this existential crisis to transform our failed economic system and build something radically better. 
 
In her most provocative book yet, Naomi Klein, author of the global bestsellers The Shock Doctrine and No Logo, tackles the most profound threat humanity has ever faced: the war our economic model is waging against life on earth. 
 
Klein exposes the myths that are clouding the climate debate. 
 
You have been told the market will save us, when in fact the addiction to profit and growth is digging us in deeper every day. You have been told it's impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it - it just requires breaking every rule in the "free-market" playbook: reining in corporate power, rebuilding local economies and reclaiming our democracies. 
 
You have also been told that humanity is too greedy and selfish to rise to this challenge. In fact, all around the world, the fight back for the next economy is already succeeding in ways both surprising and inspiring. 
 
Climate change, Klein argues, is a civilizational wake-up call, a powerful message delivered in the language of fires, floods, storms, and droughts. Confronting it is no longer about changing the light bulbs. It's about changing the world - before the world changes so drastically that no one is safe. 
 
Either we leap - or we sink. 
 
Once a decade, Naomi Klein writes a book that redefines its era. No Logo did so for globalization. The Shock Doctrine changed the way we think about austerity. This Changes Everything is about to upend the debate about the stormy era already upon us.

Will be one of the most influential books of our time

Klein is a brave and passionate writer who always deserves to be heard, and this is a powerful and urgent book

Without a doubt one of the most important books of the decade

Savages the idea that we will be saved by new technologies or by an incremental shift away from fossil fuels... Her solution requires a radical reconfiguration of our economic system

Her task is to take a potential catastrophe of unimaginable reach and to be calm and welcoming, drawing new people in. She does vast amounts of travel and research and thinking, then crafts all of it to the scale of her own voice: the voice of a pleasant, funny, unthreatening-looking woman

I have devoured Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything, the book the world has been waiting for. I urge everyone to read it (especially politicians). It is her most prescient book yet and is a much-needed call to arms as time runs out on climate change

It's no exaggeration to say This Changes Everything is the most important book I've read all year - perhaps in a decade. Klein sets out the scientific case for urgent action on climate change and argues passionately that our only hope of combating its effects is a revolution in our entire economic system. Crucially, she manages to leave the reader with a degree of optimism

[T]he problems - climate change, plus everything that is changing as a result, plus the increasing toxicity of the planet - can no longer be denied. This is a conversation that needs to happen on a large scale, and on a local scale, and on a personal scale, very soon

Captured the collective sense of anger and awakening ... [a] frightening look at climate change and capitalism

Naomi Klein applies her fine, fierce, and meticulous mind to the greatest, most urgent questions of our times. . . I count her among the most inspirational political thinkers in the world today

Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things and Capitalism: A Ghost Story

A book of such ambition and consequence it is almost unreviewable ... The most momentous and contentious environmental book since Silent Spring

The book has an uplifting message: that humans have changed before, and can change again. It poses a gutsy challenge to those who are vaguely hoping that the whole issue will go away, or that some new technology will save us

This may be the first truly honest book ever written about climate change

The proposition that the world's political and economic institutions are preventing us from meeting the lethal challenge of global warming is hardly novel. But Naomi Klein in her new book articulates the case as forcefully and comprehensively as anyone has yet managed

Powerfully and uncompromisingly written, the impassioned polemic we have come to expect from Klein, mixing first-hand accounts of events around the world and withering political analysis . . . Her stirring vision is nothing less than a political, economic, social, cultural and moral make-over of the human world

Klein is one of the left's most influential figures and a prominent climate champion. . . . [She] is a gifted writer and there is little doubt about the problem she identifies

Gripping and dramatic . . . [Klein] writes of a decisive battle for the fate of the earth in which we either take back control of the planet from the capitalists who are destroying it or watch it all burn

An energetic exploration of issues surrounding climate change vociferously advocates immediate, radical reforms... The distinctiveness of the book resides... in its immersive reporting (on "Blockadia" eco-movements and futuristic geoengineering proposals) and in Klein's sheer outspokenness

Klein has, with this book, thoroughly and completely debunked everything promoted under the banner of conservatism today - and she has done so with a work that's more powerful than a stack of C4. 
This Changes Everything deserves to be viewed not as one of the greatest nonfiction works of the 2010s, but as one of the greatest nonfiction works of all-time. ... This book will expand and intensify the worldwide climate-justice movement, which is why the rhetorical attacks on Klein will become ever more aggressive. It will politically galvanize the young and the vulnerable, who have so much to lose due to the climate crisis. It will create climate leaders across this warming globe. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate is not just a book, not just a moment, not just a movement. It is a weapon of justice. It is a path of survival

[Her] words and knowledge run deep, inspiring change and the need for immediate action

Today @NaomiAKlein's new book #ThisChangesEverything is out now - I'm reading it - it's great

Naomi Klein is a genius. She has done for politics what Jared Diamond did for the study of human history. She skillfully blends politics, economics and history and distills out simple and powerful truths with universal applicability

The manifesto that the climate movement - and the planet - needs right now... For those with whom her message does resonate - and they are likely to be legion - her book could help catalyze the kind of mass movement she argues the world needs now

Has the potential to be the definitive account of our current moment... Klein's great gifts have always been synthesizing huge amounts of information and drawing connections between seemingly disparate issues; on those points, This Changes Everything is no different

Meticulously researched and briskly rational in tone, [it] is one of the basic texts of the modern era... an essential purchase in that it tells you precisely what you need to know to discuss the climate dilemma intelligently... This Changes Everything is basic reading and no one will take you seriously until you've read every single page

An intellectual hero of many in the alter-globalization protests as well as the Occupy movement. . . . Klein is ready for battle and is not afraid to own her politics

This is the best book about climate change in a very long time-in large part because it's about much more. It sets the most important crisis in human history in the context of our other ongoing traumas, reminding us just how much the powers-that-be depend on the power of coal, gas and oil. And that in turn should give us hope, because it means the fight for a just world is the same as the fight for a livable one

Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and co-founder of 350.org

Forget everything you think you know about climate change. It's not about carbon - it's about capitalism. The good news is that we can seize this existential crisis to transform our failed economic system and build something radically better. 
 
In her most provocative book yet, Naomi Klein, author of the global bestsellers The Shock Doctrine and No Logo, tackles the most profound threat humanity has ever faced: the war our economic model is waging against life on earth.

The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

The Shock Doctrine

'Impassioned, hugely informative, wonderfully controversial, and scary as hell' John le Carré

'Impassioned, hugely informative, wonderfully controversial, and scary as hell' John le Carré 
 
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. 
 
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. 
 
 'Packed with thinking dynamite ... a book to be read everywhere' John Berger 
 
 'If you only read one non-fiction book this year, make it this one' Metro Books of the Year 
 
 'There are a few books that really help us understand the present. The Shock Doctrine is one of those books' John Gray, Guardian 
 
 'A brilliant book written with a perfectly distilled anger, channelled through hard fact. She has indeed surpassed No Logo' Independent

Impassioned, hugely informative, wonderfully controversial, and scary as hell

Packed with thinking dynamite &hellip; a book to be read everywhere

If you read only one non-fiction book this year, make it this one

There are few books that really help us understand the present. The Shock Doctrine is one of those books

Lucid, calm, impeccably researched, gorgeously readable

A brilliant book written with a perfectly distilled anger, channelled through hard fact. She has indeed surpassed No Logo

Excoriating &hellip; passionate and informed &hellip; Her prose packs a punch

And the Fight for the Living World

End Times Fascism

A blistering exposé of the new far-right apocalyptic alliance that's on the move around the globe - and how we resist 
 
The far right is on the march again – but this time it’s different from anything we’ve seen before. A new, apocalyptic alliance of religious fundamentalists, billionaire Silicon Valley tech kings and ethno-nationalists is on the move. They’re united in their belief that some kind of cleansing cataclysm is coming, and they welcome a future of shocks, scarcity and collapse, convinced they’ll be among the saved on the other side. 
This is the world of End Times Fascism. 
 
In this blistering reckoning with our age, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor take us deep into this man-made Armageddon complex – and show us how to resist it. Around the globe, they investigate how those who are making our world unliveable through climate chaos and job-consuming AI are preparing to protect themselves from the fallout, whether it’s by repairing to luxurious private islands for the super-rich, rocketing off to Mars or bunkering nations against a dehumanized ‘other’. 
 
But, Klein and Taylor reveal, the new supremacist survivalists are far from impregnable. They have no vision of a shared future. All they offer are remixes of a bygone past: the nihilistic, sadistic pleasures of domination. If we’re to meet this critical moment and defend what’s left of democracy before it’s smashed up beyond repair, we must break the doom loop, and find a new way of living together, rooted in our existence on this earth, in the here and now. A story not of end times – but of better times. This book shows us how.

Naomi Klein (Author) Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker, and the best-selling author of Doppelganger, No Logo, The Shock Doctrine and other acclaimed books, which have been translated into 35 languages. She is associate professor of geography and codirector of the Centre for Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia, and writes a regular column for the Guardian. Doppelganger was the winner of the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction and named one of the ten best books of the year by New York magazine, Slate, and Time. Astra Taylor (Author) Astra Taylor is an award-winning writer, activist, documentarian, and co-founder of the Debt Collective. She is the author of The People’s Platform, which won the American Book Award, and Democracy May Not Exist But We'll Miss It When It is Gone and The Age of Insecurity. Taylor regularly writes for publications including The New Yorker and The New York Times. Taylor toured with the band Neutral Milk Hotel and was the 2023 CBC Massey Lecturer.

The far right is on the march again – but this time it’s different from anything we’ve seen before. A new, apocalyptic alliance of religious fundamentalists, billionaire Silicon Valley tech kings and ethno-nationalists is on the move. They’re united in their belief that some kind of cleansing cataclysm is coming, and they welcome a future of shocks, scarcity and collapse, convinced they’ll be among the saved on the other side. 
This is the world of End Times Fascism. 
 
In this blistering reckoning with our age, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor take us deep into this man-made Armageddon complex – and show us how to resist it. Around the globe, they investigate how those who are making our world unliveable through climate chaos and job-consuming AI are preparing to protect themselves from the fallout, whether it’s by repairing to luxurious private islands for the super-rich, rocketing off to Mars or bunkering nations against a dehumanized ‘other’. 
 
But, Klein and Taylor reveal, the new supremacist survivalists are far from impregnable. They have no vision of a shared future. All they offer are remixes of a bygone past: the nihilistic, sadistic pleasures of domination. If we’re to meet this critical moment and defend what’s left of democracy before it’s smashed up beyond repair, we must break the doom loop, and find a new way of living together, rooted in our existence on this earth, in the here and now. A story not of end times – but of better times. This book shows us how.

Naomi Klein

A brilliant interrogation and analysis of the disturbing fissures and extreme factions evident in our politics and culture at the moment. Everyone should read it

It’s the perfect non-fiction book

Dazzling and erudite ... There is something hopeful in this project, in its sheer intellectual ambition and range, its effort to pick apart and decipher the absurdities and ironies of our political derangement, which almost no other writer could pull off. If I had to name a single book that makes sense of these last few dark years, it would be this one.

A deeply compelling read, one which feels urgent and necessary as we enter yet another period of political strife. In Doppelganger, Klein gives shape and context to that apocalyptic mindset &ndash; and implores us to offer up an alternative.

A book of surprising insights, unexpected connections and great subtlety ... Doppelganger is really a story of political and psychic confusion ... True to form, Klein&rsquo;s ultimate message is log off and get on to the streets.

Since reading Doppelganger, I have talked about it at least once a week. Friends and family, wearied into submission, have either read it or, very possibly, pretended to have read it to shut me up. With this book, Naomi Klein is asking the key questions that underpin the crises that engulf us. How do we combat online radicalisation? How do we rebuild communities in the face of despotic governments and the climate crisis? A case of mistaken identity leads her down the disinformation rabbit hole, prompting questions that she tackles with her customary insight, empathy and exquisite prose. This is the essential book for our times.

I’ve been raving about Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger ... I can’t think of another text that better captures the berserk period we’re living through.

It begins as a pandemic memoir on the doppelganger theme: Klein is confused with feminist-turned-conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf. Then it becomes a painful investigation into what drives people to the dark side of the political spectrum. It’s a vulnerable exploration of the leftwing political movement and the shadowlands of the west

A deeply insightful inquiry into the ways in which the technology that drives our lives increasingly demands mirror-image doubles, tribal combatants to fuel a divided culture ... a powerful antidote. In articulating and examining some of the darker forces of the world her &ldquo;double&rdquo; inhabits, Klein never forgets that the primary purpose of mirrors is actually self-reflection; to understand the other, you first have to know yourself.

This book is the product of Klein’s fascination with her doppelgänger. As she charts [Naomi] Wolf’s journey towards extremism, Klein shines a light on the dangers of social media and the new world of online conspiracy theories.

The most comforting book I read this year – Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger tells of her slightly paranoid obsession with Naomi Wolf, her conspiracy theorist “double”. Klein catches that sense that the world has become fictional, but she manages to stay sane, interesting and trenchantly political throughout. In difficult times, this feels very empowering.

Wonderfully esoteric ... it expands into the territory of mass confusion: about politics, technology and what we can ever really know.

This story of mistaken identity would on its own be gripping and revealing enough, both as a psychological study and for its explorations of the double in art and history, the disorienting effects of social media, and the queasy feeling of looking into a distorted mirror. But the larger subject of Doppelganger turns out to be a far more complex and consequential confusion ... A uniquely astute account of the scrambled political formations that have come out of the pandemic.

Klein wields her polymathic expertise like a sword, slicing through the mirror world ... There's a lot going on in Doppelganger, yet somehow Klein ties it all together into what we seem to be lacking as individuals: a cohesive whole. Doppelganger is both timely and timeless, a work in a grand tradition.

Like your smartest friend guiding you through a rather knotty personal conundrum that just happens to involve the most pressing issues of our age.

International bestseller Naomi Klein returns with her attempt to make sense of what has been a wild and bizarre few years ... Everything you have been afraid to do a real deep-dive into, Klein goes right in and what she comes up with is equally fascinating and terrifying.

Naomi Klein masterfully weaves her way through anti-vaxxers, wellness influencers and alt-right demagogues, attempting to make sense of the conspiratorial turn in contemporary politics ... far reaching and relentlessly incisive.

This bold, brave and expertly researched book diagnoses the big problems and offers practical, considered solutions for them.

Klein's prose is tight and urgent ... evoking both laughter and dismay and entrancingly matching the mounting frenzy of seeing your public self morph into someone else ... [Klein's] comprehensive and nuanced treatments of these issues are valuable and compelling ... A disarming and addictive call to solidarity.

[A] striking meditation . . . Klein's writing is perceptive and intriguingly personal . . . By articulating such an expansive view of the uncanny, Klein's mesmerizing narrative reflects the unique anxieties and modes of analysis that have come to dominate the online era. Like Klein's previous books, it's a definitive signpost of the times.

In an ever-increasing polarised world, Doppelgangers asks the big contemporary questions and is dripping in acerbic wit from a phenomenal writer.

[A] brave new book . . . By the end, I wondered if maybe Klein had come closer than ever to cracking the code that reveals what, really, is at the heart of our collective dysfunction ... Klein brings her analytical prowess and keen wit to an exploration of the concept of doubles ... [She] blends the personal and the political so seamlessly that it&rsquo;s hard to imagine they could ever be apart.

A fantastic read, witty and illuminating, informative and thoughtful, deeply humane while uncompromisingly clear about some very disturbing truths.

This book is as foreboding as a guide through the maze of mirrors of the modern right should be. But it's not only that: Naomi Klein has made Doppelganger gripping and scintillating, too. The result is a reckoning with the present moment that's as insightful as all Klein's indispensable work, and as suspenseful as a novel.

Naomi Klein never disappoints. Doppelganger swirls through the bewildering ideas of the ultra-right that often appear as a distorted mirror of left struggle and strategy. With her always incisive analysis of the systems and structures linked to global capitalism, Klein now fiercely and brilliantly urges that our justice movements be prepared to follow the quest for new meaning into dimensions where we might least expect to find it: in injury and vulnerability.

I finished this book and nearly cried with relief, Klein gave me the gift of being calm. She explores and diagnoses with empathy, warmth and searing precision the confusion and utter madness of what it is to be alive right now. This is a big book with big ideas which poses the most direct questions for our times. Everyone needs to read it as a matter of urgency.

This will be remembered as Naomi Klein's true master work: the ultimate expression of our collective crisis, told through the necessarily subjective lens of human experience ... With the benefit of Naomi Klein's journey through the crucible of self-annihilation, we can understand everything from Covid conspiracies to climate denialism in a new light. A triumph.

Once a decade, Naomi Klein writes a book that prompts us to completely rethink the moment we're in. If you want to understand where we are now - and how to find our way back to sanity - you have to read this totally brilliant book.

If you want to make sense of a world upside-down, this staggering masterpiece will show you how - and then it blazes a path to a more loving and caring future

V (formerly Eve Ensler), author of Reckoning and The Vagina Monologues

It’s brilliant. The Canadian leftist author Klein is often mistaken for the American feminist and conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf and she uses this annoying fact to delve into the warped “mirror world” of our polarised political landscape. She is the best at making politics accessible and entertaining. A rare skill

A miraculously lucid laying-out of what is really happening in the world via the dark web, the interested parties behind fake news and the human psyche. It is at once personal and universal, and not in any way hectoring

The most comforting book I read this year – Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger - tells of her slightly paranoid obsession with Naomi Wolf, her conspiracy theorist “double”. Klein catches that sense that the world has become fictional, but she manages to stay sane, interesting and trenchantly political throughout. In difficult times, this feels very empowering

I’ve been a massive fan of Naomi Klein ever since the groundbreaking No Logo. Her latest book, Doppelgänger, purports to deal with people constantly mistaking her for the conspiracist, Naomi Wolf, but is actually about the polarised duality of modern life. It’s full of clever, funny, thought-provoking stuff

Naomi Klein has a very strange problem: people keep confusing her with Naomi Wolf. So what, you might think. But whereas Klein is a mainstream left-wing author, Wolf (who found fame as the author of The Beauty Myth) has drifted off into nutty vaccine conspiracy theories and election denial. This book is the product of Klein’s fascination with her doppelgänger. As she charts Wolf’s journey towards extremism, Klein shines a light on the dangers of social media and the new world of online conspiracy theories

Naomi Klein’s wonderfully esoteric Doppelganger begins with an individual case of confusion: Klein is often mistaken for Naomi Wolf, another Jewish thinker and author—albeit one who, unlike Klein, has sunk into conspiracy theories about Covid vaccinations. But then it expands into the territory of mass confusion: about politics, technology and what we can ever really know

Viciousness towards famous women is also part of the story in Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, in which she becomes obsessed with her half-namesake Naomi Wolf, and the latter’s curious transformation from hip feminist to Covid conspiracy theorist and truther on the topic of contrails. It doesn’t help that Klein is so often confused with her subject “in this crowded and filthy global toilet known as social media”. But as she continues “cringe-following” Wolf her themes widen and darken, taking in a cultural history of doubles and evil twins, conspiracy theories more generally, the rise of the populist right in the person of Steve Bannon, and a close reading of Philip Roth, whose Operation Shylock she reads persuasively as the key to many such mythologies

A Trip Into the Mirror World

What if you woke up one morning and found you'd acquired a double? Someone almost like you, and yet not you at all? 
 
When Naomi Klein discovered that a woman who shared her first name, but had radically different, harmful views, was getting chronically mistaken for her, it seemed too ridiculous to take seriously. Then suddenly it wasn't. She started to find herself grappling with a distorted sense of reality, becoming obsessed with reading the threats on social media, the endlessly scrolling insults from the followers of her doppelganger. Why had her shadowy other gone down such an extreme path? Why was identity - all we have to meet the world - so unstable? 
 
To find out, Klein decided to follow her double into a bizarre, uncanny mirror world: one of conspiracy theories, anti-vaxxers and demagogue hucksters, where soft-focus wellness influencers make common cause with fire-breathing far right propagandists (all in the name of protecting 'the children'). In doing so, she lifts the lid on our own culture during this surreal moment in history, as we turn ourselves into polished virtual brands, publicly shame our enemies, watch as deep fakes proliferate and whole nations flip from democracy to something far more sinister. 
 
This is a book for our age and for all of us; a deadly serious dark comedy which invites us to view our reflections in the looking glass. It's for anyone who has lost hours down an internet rabbit hole, who wonders why our politics has become so fatally warped, and who wants a way out of our collective vertigo and back to fighting for what really matters.

Naomi Klein

Praise for Doppelganger

A brilliant interrogation and analysis of the disturbing fissures and extreme factions evident in our politics and culture at the moment. Everyone should read it

It’s the perfect non-fiction book

Dazzling and erudite ... There is something hopeful in this project, in its sheer intellectual ambition and range, its effort to pick apart and decipher the absurdities and ironies of our political derangement, whic ...

A brilliant interrogation and analysis of the disturbing fissures and extreme factions evident in our politics and culture at the moment. Everyone should read it

It’s the perfect non-fiction book

Dazzling and erudite ... There is something hopeful in this project, in its sheer intellectual ambition and range, its effort to pick apart and decipher the absurdities and ironies of our political derangement, whic ...

A brilliant interrogation and analysis of the disturbing fissures and extreme factions evident in our politics and culture at the moment. Everyone should read it

It’s the perfect non-fiction book

Dazzling and erudite ... There is something hopeful in this project, in its sheer intellectual ambition and range, its effort to pick apart and decipher the absurdities and ironies of our political derangement, whic ...

Books by Naomi Klein

Articles featuring Naomi Klein

The Penguin books that shaped our political understanding

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter