The section on China discusses the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests, and the liberalization of China's economy. In Poland she discusses how the left-leaning trade union Solidarity won the country's 1989 legislative elections, but subsequently employed the shock doctrine due to IMF pressure. Part 4 reports on how Klein thinks the shock doctrine was applied in Poland, China, South Africa, Russia, and the Four Asian Tigers. Klein says that Margaret Thatcher applied mild shock 'therapy' facilitated by the Falklands War, while free market reform in Bolivia was possible due to a combination of pre-existing economic crises and the charisma of Jeffrey Sachs. Part 3 covers attempts to apply the shock doctrine without the need for extreme violence against sections of the population. Klein connects torture with economic shock therapy. Part 2 discusses the use of 'shock doctrine' to transform South American economies in the 1970s, focusing on the 1973 coup in Chile led by General Augusto Pinochet and influenced by a prominent group of Chilean economists who had been trained at the University of Chicago in the Economics department, funded by the CIA, and advised by Milton Friedman. The second chapter introduces Milton Friedman and his Chicago school of economics, whom Klein describes as leading a laissez-faire capitalist movement committed to creating free markets that are even less regulated than those that existed before the Great Depression. Part 1 begins with a chapter on psychiatric shock therapy and the covert experiments conducted by the psychiatrist Ewen Cameron in collusion with the Central Intelligence Agency. The book is divided into seven parts with a total of 21 chapters. The book served as the main source of a 2009 documentary feature film with the same title directed by Michael Winterbottom.

Some reviewers criticized the book for making what they viewed as simplifications of political phenomena, while others lauded it as a compelling and important work. The book advances the idea that some man-made events, such as the Iraq War, were undertaken with the intention of pushing through such unpopular policies in their wake. This centers on the exploitation of national crises (disasters or upheavals) to establish controversial and questionable policies, while citizens are too distracted (emotionally and physically) to engage and develop an adequate response, and resist effectively. In the book, Klein argues that neoliberal free market policies (as advocated by the economist Milton Friedman) have risen to prominence in some developed countries because of a deliberate strategy of ' shock therapy'.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is a 2007 book by the Canadian author and social activist Naomi Klein.

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein