A review by hikemogan
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins
3.0
John Perkins spent a good deal of his opening chapter describing how dark forces colluded to keep this book from ever seeing the light of day. Surely, a reader must think, there are some devastating details on the contractor/industrial complex in here that stirred the evil Bechtels and Haliburtons of the world to try to stop Perkins. Yet, after reading the rest of the book I realized that there is nothing new in here that a casual reader of say, Noam Chomsky, or the New York Times, wouldn't know. Is it really news that organizations like the IMF, World Bank, WTO, or any of the various "consulting firms" operating in poor foreign countries in the last 50 years have been manipulating and deceiving in order to serve their Western founders? Worst of all, there are few pieces of the book that give actual specifics about how this manipulation and deceit happened, but rather most of the narrative amounts to "Bad things happened somewhere, I was involved and felt bad about it. But once I made a million dollars, I made sure to stop and write this book."
As far as Perkins' writing style, it's obvious that he had a healthy serving of mystery novels and spy films prior to putting pen to paper. From the mysterious figure of "Claudine" to his absolutely pointless details about his exotic love affairs to clandestine meetings with nameless fallen power brokers in Persian tents, sometimes I had to laugh out loud at how contrived and self-serving Perkins' writing was. It's almost as if his sole desire was to leave some naïve reader thinking, "John Perkins certainly is a good man, and a James Bond-ish rake if I may say."
If you'd really like to know about the issues addressed in this book, get a book about Allende, or Omar Torrijos, or Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. On the other hand, if you'd like a corny mystery novel full of clichés, I'm sure there are a lot of writers out there who did twice as good a job. If you'd like to just read about John Perkins, pick up this book.
As far as Perkins' writing style, it's obvious that he had a healthy serving of mystery novels and spy films prior to putting pen to paper. From the mysterious figure of "Claudine" to his absolutely pointless details about his exotic love affairs to clandestine meetings with nameless fallen power brokers in Persian tents, sometimes I had to laugh out loud at how contrived and self-serving Perkins' writing was. It's almost as if his sole desire was to leave some naïve reader thinking, "John Perkins certainly is a good man, and a James Bond-ish rake if I may say."
If you'd really like to know about the issues addressed in this book, get a book about Allende, or Omar Torrijos, or Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. On the other hand, if you'd like a corny mystery novel full of clichés, I'm sure there are a lot of writers out there who did twice as good a job. If you'd like to just read about John Perkins, pick up this book.