Disaster Capitalism - by Antony Loewenstein (Paperback)

About the Book

"First published by Verso 2015"--Title page verso.

Book Synopsis

This "keenly observed and timely investigation" of how capitalism makes a fortune from disaster, poverty and catastrophe is "a potent weapon for shock resistors around the world" (Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine).

Disaster has become big business. Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein travels across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea, the United States, Britain, Greece, and Australia to witness the reality of disaster capitalism. He discovers how companies cash in on organized misery in a hidden world of privatized detention centers, militarized private security, aid profiteering, and destructive mining.

What emerges through Loewenstein's re­porting is a dark history of multinational corporations that, with the aid of media and political elites, have grown more powerful than national governments. In the twenty-first century, the vulnerable have become the world's most valuable commodity.

Review Quotes

"The forces of disaster capitalism are increasingly on the defensive, but their attacks on the global commons have expanded in the years since I wrote The Shock Doctrine. I am very grateful that Antony Loewenstein has brought his meticulous reporting to this subject, and the result is a keenly observed and timely investigation into rampant resource plunder, privatized detention centers, and an array of other forms of corporate rapacity on four continents. This book will serve as a potent weapon for shock resistors around the world."
--Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine

"Chilling study, based on careful and courageous reporting, and illuminated with perceptive analysis, helps us understand all too well the saying that man is a wolf to man."
--Noam Chomsky

"A journey into a world of mutated economics and corrupt politics that we ignore at our peril."
--John Pilger

"A devastating, incisive follow-up to Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine."
--Jeremy Scahill

"Our economic system now depends upon transforming emergency relief, incarceration and the processing of asylum seekers into profits ... [an] unnerving and convincing book."
--Owen Hatherley, Guardian

"Antony Loewenstein offers us a superb description of the diminishing power of national governments and international organisations to exercise power in the modern world."
--Robert J. Burrowes, Lahore Times

About the Author

Antony Loewenstein is an independent Australian journalist, documentary maker and blogger who has written for the BBC, the Nation and the Washington Post. He's a weekly Guardian columnist and the author of three best-selling books, My Israel Question, The Blogging Revolution and Profits of Doom: How Vulture Capitalism is Swallowing the World. He is co-editor of After Zionism and Left Turn and co-writer of For God's Sake. His books have been translated, and his journalism has been a finalist in many global awards. He's currently working on a documentary about disaster capitalism.