24. No Logo by Naomi Klein
This is a worthy educational tome about global corporate domination, that is required reading for my job; I found it interesting because I could relate it to the reports I read every day. I also learned what an Export Processing Zone is, and why they are bad things.
It was pretty heavy-going, though; and really very putdownable. I don’t generally read a lot of non-fiction, and I started to yearn for something that didn’t labour the point quite so much.
Also it’s quite out of date by now, which I know in particular from some of the examples given about factories where women are forced to have abortions, pre-teens are making shoes, people are routinely fired for refusing to work overtime. Perhaps my clients just choose good factories, but I haven’t seen an audit that was quite that bad, yet. Although my colleague did today come across a factory that employed monks, who are paid in food because they won’t accept money; hard to assess whether they are receiving minimum wage.
Celebrated the end of the book by watching Supersize Me, which is about both corporate and personal greed, and would certainly put us right off McDonalds, if we ever ate that sort of junk in the first place.
3/5
June 3, 2005
Worthy Tome
Great book, but ‘putdownable’ is a very apt description. I’ve had it about four years and, I’m sad to admit, have still to finish it. However, I do like the design of the cover – especially the logo, funnily enough – so that’s OK then.
Read parts of this for a political class in college. My problem isn’t with the book so much as the fact that when Gore hired Klein to be his image consultant, she told him to wear BROWN. He still, mind, lost the election. Grr.
I’m with Vaughan, I’ve read about 5/6 of it but just can’t pick it back up. I’d already read Fast Food Nation but SuperSize Me was fascinating as well.
I’ve got supersize me on Sky+., although I still do like a MaccyD occasinaly. (Actually I like them all the time, but only eat them on the odd occasion now, lest it makes me a fat bloater again)
I came out of SuperSizeMe really, really craving a Big Mac.