Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Book Summary and Reviews of On Fire by Naomi Klein

On Fire by Naomi Klein

On Fire

The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal

by Naomi Klein

  • Critics' Consensus (10):
  • Published:
  • Sep 2019, 320 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

#1 international and New York Times bestselling author Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything, makes the case for a Green New Deal—explaining how bold climate action can be a blueprint for a just and thriving society.

For more than twenty years, Naomi Klein has been the foremost chronicler of the economic war waged on both people and planet—and an unapologetic champion of a sweeping environmental agenda with justice at its center. In lucid, elegant dispatches from the frontlines of contemporary natural disaster, she pens surging, indispensable essays for a wide public: prescient advisories and dire warnings of what future awaits us if we refuse to act, as well as hopeful glimpses of a far better future. On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal gathers for the first time more than a decade of her impassioned writing, and pairs it with new material on the staggeringly high stakes of our immediate political and economic choices.

These long-form essays show Klein at her most prophetic and philosophical, investigating the climate crisis not only as a profound political challenge but as a spiritual and imaginative one, as well. Delving into topics ranging from the clash between ecological time and our culture of "perpetual now," to the soaring history of humans changing and evolving rapidly in the face of grave threats, to rising white supremacy and fortressed borders as a form of "climate barbarism," this is a rousing call to action for a planet on the brink.

With reports spanning from the ghostly Great Barrier Reef, to the annual smoke-choked skies of the Pacific Northwest, to post-hurricane Puerto Rico, to a Vatican attempting an unprecedented "ecological conversion," Klein makes the case that we will rise to the existential challenge of climate change only if we are willing to transform the systems that produced this crisis.

An expansive, far-ranging exploration that sees the battle for a greener world as indistinguishable from the fight for our lives, On Fire captures the burning urgency of the climate crisis, as well as the fiery energy of a rising political movement demanding a catalytic Green New Deal.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Naomi Klein is the intellectual godmother of the Green New Deal —which just happens to be the most important idea in the world right now" - Bill McKibben

"Naomi Klein's work has always moved and guided me. She is the great chronicler of our age of climate emergency, an inspirer of generations." - Greta Thunberg, climate activist

"If I were a rich man, I'd buy 245 million copies of Naomi Klein's On Fire and hand-deliver them to every eligible voter in America. ... Klein is a skilled writer." - Jeff Goodell, The New York Times

"[In On Fire] Naomi Klein makes a keenly argued, well-researched and impassioned case. ... [Y]ou need to read this book." - David Grinspoon, The Washington Post

"A critically important thought-leader in these perilous times, a necessary voice as a courageous movement of movements rises from the ashes." - Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow 

"Naomi is like a great doctor—she can diagnose problems nobody else sees." - Alfonso Cuarón, Academy Award-winning director of Roma

"Naomi Klein applies her fine, fierce and meticulous mind to the greatest, most urgent questions of our times... . I count her among the most inspirational political thinkers in the world today." - Arundhati Roy, Man Booker Prize-winng author of The God of Small Things

"Naomi Klein is a precious gift: every time I read her words, my heart leaps from sadness and anger to action. She takes us deep, down to the roots of what is wrong—and then up, up to a height from which we can see what must be done. Everything we love is at stake now: these writings are our best and brightest hope." - Emma Thompson

"The greatest theorist of climate change." - Amitav Ghosh, author of The Hungry Tide

"Masterful. . .What separates Klein from many other advocates for a Green New Deal is her balanced combination of idealism and politics-based realism. . .Another important addition to the literature on the most essential issue of our day." - Kirkus Reviews

This information about On Fire was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Naomi Klein Author Biography

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of the international bestseller No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. Translated into 28 languages and with more than a million copies in print, The New York Times called No Logo "a movement bible." In 2000, The Guardian Newspaper short-listed it for its First Book Award, and in 2001, No Logo won the Canadian National Business Book Award, and the French Prix Médiations. She is also the author of Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate, and The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which is an international bestseller and was published worldwide in September 2007. Additionally, she was a contributor to both Wrestling with Zion: ...

... Full Biography
Link to Naomi Klein's Website

Other books by Naomi Klein at BookBrowse
  • The Shock Doctrine jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more history, current affairs and religion...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people ...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.