Fences and windows - Naomi Klein

The story of the rise of the movement that wanted accountable, improved globalization.

For two years Naomi Klein wrote a weekly column for Canada's leading newspaper, the Globe & Mail (syndicated worldwide, in the Guardian in the UK). She has, by selecting, rewriting and rearranging these columns, prepared what amounts to a first-hand historical record of the gradual rise to prominence of the anti-global-corporatism movement, and of its most notable successes and failures. It has a truly international scope, covering everything from the Zapatistas' rebellion in Mexico to the Social Centres in Italy, from the biggest peaceful protest demos since the 1960s to the gassings and shootings at Genoa. Naomi analyses developments in local democracy, in law enforcement, in privatisation laws, in capital migrations, in union behaviour, in marketing, in summitry. She gets close to the suited summits - the WTO, the G8, the IMF, NAFTA. She looks at bioterrorism, pollution, hypocrisy, fear and confusion. It is a portrait, or rather the underlying negative, of the planet's torrid time between the Seattle summit and the world-changing events of 11 September 2001. It makes for dramatic, immediate, indispensable history writing, and reading.