The Guardian Bookshop makes over 180,000 books available with up to 40% discount, as well as highlighting some of our favourite publications in each genre.
Find out more.
Follow-up to the acclaimed bestseller "Blair's Wars", providing new insight into how the power and democratic values of the West are under threat.
Synopsis
From the acclaimed author of BLAIR'S WARS comes a devastating new insight into how the power and democratic values of the West are under threat.
Book Details
Publisher:
POCKET BOOKS
Publication Date:
27-May-2010
ISBN:
9781416526049
Observer review
Freedom for Sale by John Kampfner
Peter Preston the observer Sat 05 June 2010
Kampfner, political journalist turned human rights campaigner, addresses the anaesthetised freedom of the city state of his birth, Singapore, and the insidious spread of Lee Kuan Yew's model democracy to ask whetheryou can have economic success without political freedom. Singapore has made what he calls "a pact" with its citizenry. You can accrete wealth and trappings, eat good food, live in fine houses and enjoy a "good" life: just don't rock the boat. Free choice can mean choosing not to get involved. He pops one further factor into this pot: fear of chaos.
It is a pungent thesis, argued with verve and an abundance of detail. Maybe the force diminishes as we reach Obama, because he doesn't (yet) fit. Maybe the shock of the new blinds Kampfner to the grot of the old. And his habit of parading his travel schedules in the present tense like Alan Whicker playing John Pilger gets irritating. But none of this diminishes the book's fundamental questions, often posed with a clarity that makes you wince.