Media Reviews
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 -- Cornelia Parker * Observer, Books of the Year *
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 -- Stephanie Merritt * Observer, Books of the Year *
[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 -- Margaret Atwood * Guardian, Books of the Year *
A desperately needed wake-up call for people like me, exposing why the threat is real and pressing - but also demonstrating why it offers an incredible opportunity to rebuild our world and create a new generation of sustainable jobs. The book is a warning. It has to be heeded -- Owen Jones * New Statesman, Books of the Year *
Captured the collective sense of anger and awakening ... [a] frightening look at climate change and capitalism -- Matt Haig * Observer, Books of the Year *
Klein brings in the weight of her knowledge and passion to show us the full force of the environmental destruction that we live in now - and, incredibly, gives us some hope regarding what could be done for the future * Flavorwire, Best Nonfiction Books of 2014 *
A book of such ambition and consequence it is almost unreviewable ... The most momentous and contentious environmental book since Silent Spring * New York Times Book Review *
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
Without a doubt one of the most important books of the decade -- Amitav Ghosh
Will be one of the most influential books of our time -- Owen Jones
Klein is a brave and passionate writer who always deserves to be heard, and this is a powerful and urgent book * Observer *
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 * New York Times *
What makes Klein's books so excellent is that she is able to tackle seemingly intractable problems with control and precision, examining and making available their key contours to the interested reader. Klein is not paralyzed by enormous, fundamental, systematic problems. Instead, she excels at dissecting them. Such was true of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, and the same can be said with This Changes Everything. No one could have been better chosen to bring such an unsettling issue to the mainstream than Klein. The result is an excellent and plausible balance between fear and hope, and a call for social activism as one means to begin to convince our governments to actively address the current climate crisis * Huffington Post *
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 * Sunday Times *
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 * Guardian *
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 * Independent *
This may be the first truly honest book ever written about climate change * Time *
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 * Los Angeles Review of Books *
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 * New Scientist *
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 * Financial Times *
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 * Rolling Stone *
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 * New Yorker *
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 * Washington Monthly *
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 -- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Today @NaomiAKlein's new book #ThisChangesEverything is out now - I'm reading it - it's great -- Russell Brand
Clearly written and articulate ... Klein identifies that at its core the fight on climate change is a fight between two very different ways at looking at the world. And what is at stake is the future of humanity and the nature we all depend on... An important read. In my view Klein is right. The demarcation lines are clearer than ever. If we are to win the fight against climate change we will need to fundamentally change the world * Friends of the Earth *
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 liveable one -- Bill McKibben author of The End of Nature and co-founder of 350.org
[Her] words and knowledge run deep, inspiring change and the need for immediate action -- Charlize Theron
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 * San Francisco Gate *
A controversial and thoroughly researched challenge to neoliberal ideology * Chicago Tribune *
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 * The Globe and Mail *
A wonderful book narrated by a likeable, really smart and sometimes funny author who makes her readers feel smart, too. It provides us sufficient reasons for the imperative to recreate our economic world in ways that align it with our physical world and our only home. And, in broad strokes, it shows us how -- Sandra Steingraber, Science Advisor for Americans against Fracking, Ecowatch
Klein is a master at unpacking myths and contradictions, wherever their origins lie on the political spectrum * In These Times *
When she harnesses her rage at humanity's inability to see what is right in front of us, she is no mere polemicist or propagandist. She is a force of nature * Quill & Quire *
A sharp analysis that is bound to be widely discussed * Kirkus Reviews *
An enormous, complex, compelling, and, by turns, distressing and rallying analysis of the dysfunctional symbiotic relationships between free-market capitalism, the fossil fuels industry, and global warming * Booklist *
The beauty of this book is that suddenly, imagining a different world - tragically diminished in some ways, yes, but deeply inspiring in others - doesn't seem quite so much like an act of fantasy * Truth Out *
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 * Toronto Star *
A polemicist of great distinction... she challenges the reader to become engaged in society's response to climate change * Manly Daily *
Klein's most ambitious and urgent book ... essential reading for anyone who cares about the future of life on earth * Weekend Australian *