Twin Peeks

For Canadians of a certain ilk — Gen X, lefty, raised in counterculture circles, news obsessed — Naomi Klein has long been an icon. A columnist for the Toronto Star in her twenties, Klein shot to stardom in 1999 with her groundbreaking No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, which sold more than a million copies and became a kind of bible for the anti-globalization movement. She has since travelled extensively, publishing in the international press to wide acclaim, and penning what she archly refers to as books on “Big Ideas About Serious Subjects.” Known for interrogating capitalism and challenging corporate power, Klein is so committed to the workers of the world, she has joked in interviews, that she visited Indonesian sweatshops on her honeymoon.

So it was with anticipation that this reviewer, a fortysomething news junkie raised on the Left Coast, picked up Klein’s pandemic outing, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World. What...