No Is Not Enough

Starred review from July 24, 2017
Journalist and activist Klein (This Changes Everything) turns to lessons from her previous books as well as more recent work from fellow journalists and activists as she lays out a blueprint for combating Trumpism and the corporatist policies of his predecessors that made his rise possible. Trump, she writes, “is less an aberration than a logical conclusion” of the previous half-century’s obsession with free-market ideology. Since the 1970s, war, economic shifts, and extreme weather events have been exploited to implement the economic “shock tactics” that underpin neoliberal austerity regimes. These crises are deeply intertwined and “can only be dealt with through collective action,” Klein posits. She also outlines the history of American “racial capitalism” and the “divide-and-terrorize” political strategies that have maintained it to the present day. To counter this, she writes, movements must be prepared to take power and govern together towards multifaceted ends, as “no one movement can win on its own.” Urging social movements to crystallize the yes for which they’re fighting (as opposed to simply resisting), Klein cites the Leap Manifesto in Canada and the Vision for Black Lives in the U.S. as examples of community-developed documents for building a new world. With a genuine sense of hope, Klein illuminates paths to collectively forge an ecologically sound, anticapitalist order.

The main point of this audiobook is that Donald Trump's election is a terrible turn for both the United States and the world, and it aims to instruct his opponents about how to resist and fight back against his policies. Given the content, one would expect that the audiobook's narrator would approach it with force and urgency. That's why the choice of Brit Marling is rather curious. She reads clearly and paces herself well, but her voice is thin and timid. Further, she often drops her intonation at the ends of sentences and seems to approach this manifesto as an academic work, rather than as the call to the barricades the author intends. R.I.G. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine