i’ve been consuming a lot of books recently that talk about how bad corporations are. i just finished off the corporation by joel bakan, which shares source material with the long (boring?) documentary of the same name. this book was a much easier (and shorter) read than no logo and in fact they touch upon a lot of similar issues and interviewed the same people. however, while the idea behind no logo was that corporations have changed our lives for the worse, the corporation talks about how corporations are inherently unethical and as the subtitle puts it, are in a “pathological pursuit of profit and power”.

there were a couple of important ideas brought up by the book, i won’t spoil it for you as you can probably find a couple of hours to tear through it, but i found it was lacking a lot of depth. there were probably one or two examples of each concept and a reoccurance of several key people throughout the book, but i thought bakan could have developed the ideas further. mostly, he simply repeated and rephrased his mantra throughout the six chapters.

i haven’t seen the documentary but the material in the book seems to be at a more mainstream level and for the casual reader. don’t let the thickness surprise you, a fifth of it is probably footnotes not worth reading. i’d recommend it as it is probably more entertaining and informative than sitting through the documentary of the same name.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: corporations, reading