Skip to main content
Trade Books For Courses Tradebooks for Courses

No Logo

No Space, No Choice, No Jobs

Naomi Klein

Picador

opens in a new window
opens in a new window No Logo Download image

ISBN10: 0312429274
ISBN13: 9780312429270

Trade Paperback

544 Pages

$25.00

Request Desk Copy
Request Exam Copy

TRADE BOOKS FOR COURSES NEWSLETTER

Sign up to receive information about new books, author events, and special offers.

Sign up now

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 is already changing the course of the 21st century. First published before the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, this is an infuriating, inspiring, and altogether pioneering work of cultural criticism that investigates money, marketing, and the anti-corporate movement. In the last decade, No Logo has become an international phenomenon and a cultural manifesto for the critics of unfettered capitalism worldwide. As America faces a second economic depression, Klein's analysis of our corporate and branded world is as timely and powerful as ever.

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—witness today's schoolbooks, superstores, sporting arenas, and brand-name synergy—a new generation has begun to battle consumerism with its own best weapons. In this provocative, well-written study, a front-line report on that battle, we learn how the Nike swoosh has changed from an athletic status-symbol to a metaphor for sweatshop labor, how teenaged McDonald's workers are risking their jobs to join the Teamsters, and how "culture jammers" utilize spray paint, computer-hacking acumen, and anti-propagandist wordplay to undercut the slogans and meanings of billboard ads (as in "Joe Chemo" for "Joe Camel").

As Klein notes in her Introduction: "This book is not another account of the power of the select group of corporate Goliaths that have gathered to form our de facto global government. Rather, it is an attempt to analyze and document the forces opposing corporate rule, and to lay out the particular set of cultural and economic conditions that made the emergence of that opposition inevitable." Thus No Logo will challenge and enlighten students of sociology, economics, popular culture, international affairs, and marketing.

Reviews

Praise for No Logo

"No Logo has been a pedagogical godsend. I used it to illustrate contemporary applications of complex cultural theories in an introductory social science sequence. It worked so beautifully, word about the book spread across campus, and other students were begging to read it in their sections of the course."—Bruce Novak, Division of Social Sciences, The University of Chicago

"A complete, user-friendly handbook on the negative effects that '90s überbrand marketing has had on culture, work, and consumer choice . . . An encyclopedic compilation of the decade's fringe and mainstream anti-corporate actions and mind-sets."—The Village Voice

"Energetic and optimistic, Ms. Klein incarnates [her] generation's invention of the North American left."—The New York Times

"The Das Kapital of the growing anti-corporate movement . . . A riveting, conscientious piece of journalism and a strident call to arms. Packed with enlightening statistics and extraordinary anecdotal evidence, No Logo is fluent, undogmatically alive to its contradictions and omission and positively seethes with intelligent anger."—The Observer (London)

"No Logo should be read by anyone who thinks that the Seattle demonstrations were an aberration."—The Economist

"A brilliant account of how Nike, Starbucks, McDonalds etc. branded the industralised world, and how the most exciting strand of radical politics is now bound up with resisting their kulturkampf . . . Fantastic and inspiring."—The Times Literary Supplement

"Klein is a sharp cultural critic and a flawless storyteller. Her analysis is thorough and thoroughly engaging."—Newsweek.com

"No Logo is an attractive sprawl of a book describing a vast confederacy of activist groups with a common interest in reining in the power of lawyering, marketing, and advertising to manipulate our desires."—The Boston Globe

"Klein is a gifted writer; her paragraphs can be as seductive as the ad campaigns she dissects."—The New York Times Book Review

"Just when you thought multi-nationals and crazed consumerism were too big to fight, along comes Naomi Klein with facts, spirit, and news of successful fighters already out there. No Logo is an invigorating call to arms for everybody who wants to save money, justice, or the universe."—Gloria Steinem

"Naomi Klein's trenchant book is the perfect introduction to and explanation of those stunning events [in Seattle] . . . This book is the very essence of cool."—The Toronto Globe and Mail

"To understand how branding drives the global market, you couldn't ask for a better guide than Naomi Klein."—Toronto Star

"A dense, fact-filled publication that makes plain the jargon spouted by all who put profit before basic human needs . . . [A work of] far-reaching vision and clear presentation. A well-conceived primer on the machinations of the modern consumer world, No Logo is required reading for anyone who thinks people should not be treated like machines."—Eye Weekly

"No Logo finally puts in perspective what the newest generation of fed-up consumers and anti-corporate activists have been trying to verbalize for the past 10 years."—Ottawa Express

"Athletic, expansive, and an antidote to sloppy thinking . . . It's impossible not to notice the prescience of her argument."—Sunday Herald (U.K.)

"Generation-X intellectual Naomi Klein could become the next Douglas Coupland with her No Logo. She anticipates a revolt against corporate power by younger people seeking brand-free space. Even if the revolt is not in the works yet, her tart writing might inspire one."—Report on Business

"No Logo has been a word-of-mouth sensation, giving voice to a generation of people under thirty who have never related to politics until now . . . Naomi Klein brilliantly charts the protean nature of consumer capitalism, how it absorbs radical challenges to its dominance and turns them into consumer products . . . A sharp and very timely book . . . A couple of chapters in, your mind is already reeling. Klein can write: favoring informality and crispness over jargon . . . [This book is] convincing and necessary, clear and fresh, calm but unsparing . . . Klein might just be helping to reinvent politics for a new generation."—The Guardian (U.K.)

"The bible for anti-corporate militancy."—Select

"Personable and well-informed, prescient, necessary, and ultimately optimistic, No Logo paints a vivid picture of spirited, creative rebellion."—Literary Review

"Naomi Klein catches the anticapitalist mood so well it seems unbelievable that No Logo was written before the 'Battle of Seattle.' She expresses brilliantly the rage that so many people feel about what is going on in the world, giving us ammunition against the bosses and governments."—Socialist Review

"Zipping between corporations, countries, and human rights violations with all the self-assured effortlessness of a multinational transferring capital between currencies, Naomi Klein's convincing analysis of the rise of the superbrand—Starbucks, Nike, Ikea, Gap, Blockbuster, et al.—reveals a world where labels are hungry for every inch of space."—The Face

"A fascinating ride through the history of marketing . . . Klein brilliantly humanises No Logo with fascinating personal stories, her voice firm but never preachy, her argument detailed but never obscure."—The Times (London)

"Packed with facts and arguments and gratifyingly cross with not just corporate culture, but our own eagerness to buy into it, No Logo couldn't have been better timed."—Independent on Sunday

"No Logo is a comprehensive account of the potential monster that the global economy has created and the actions that thwart it. So brands watch out, there is a loud and strong message here!"—Marketing magazine

"A passionate, well-written, and thoroughly researched book."—Sunday Business

"If the world really is just one big global village, then the logo is its common language understood—if not accessible to—everyone. In No Logo, Klein undertakes an arduous journey to the centre of a post-national planet. Starting with the brand's birth, as a means of bringing soul to mass marketing, she follows in the logo's wake and notes its increasing capacity for making the product subservient. Beyond this she reaches her core argument—the now uneasy struggle between corporate power and anti-corporate activism—via sweatshop labour, submerged identity and subversive action. Part sociological thesis, part design history, No Logo is entirely engrossing and emphatic."—GQ

"At once an impressive journalistic analysis and an impassioned rallying cry."—New Brunswick Telegraph

"An engaging and lively book, as persuasive as any advertisement."—Irish Times

Reviews from Goodreads

About the author

Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is the award-winning author of the acclaimed international bestsellers The Shock Doctrine, No Logo, This Changes Everything, and No Is Not Enough. She is a contributing editor for Harper’s, a reporter for Rolling Stone, and writes a regular, internationally syndicated column. She has won the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. In September 2018, she was named the inaugural Gloria Steinem Chair for Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University.

Rob Trendiak