The failure of many Western corporations to take responsibility for misdeeds carried out in their name around the world is a harsh fact of globalization and one that should shame us all. In Belching Out The Devil, Mark Thomas turns shame into anger in a comprehensive exposé of the shadier aspects of Coca-Cola’s global operations. Known to UK audiences as a stand-up comedian, here Thomson proves to be a skilled writer with a gift for giving voice to a diverse cast of witnesses, including Colombian trade unionists, Mexican shopkeepers, Turkish protestors, and New York legislators. Complicated matters of law and hair-raising descriptions of violence and child labor are presented with verve.

However, Thomas’ humor can be heavy-handed. An early visit to the Atlanta Coke Museum — also known as “The Happiness Factory” — establishes the distance between the company’s public image and darker realities, but Thomas peppers his account with all the obvious jokes involving tourists, manic company guides, and cheesy slogans. For a comedian, Thomas’ frequent joking and comic asides don’t always work; he should have more confidence in the ability of his capable writing to hold the listener’s attention without laying on the schoolboy sarcasm. What could pass as righteous anger in a short stand-up set becomes tiresome in the course of 10 hours.

The choice of Victor Villar-Hauser as a narrator is also a mixed success. His thick estuary English brings a energetic boyishness to Thomas’ tirades, but he makes some strange choices in phrasing — sentences are chopped up, he seems to lose breath in the course of long sentences, and he has a habit of pausing at odd places. (“He looks like a typical upper-management man, and I mean………that in a pejorative sense.”) It’s as if Villar-Hauser is reading the book aloud for the very first time, unsure of the next sentence. This can be distracting, though his enthusiasm arguably carries the day. —Dafydd Phillips