Product Description

At a time when the United States exacts a greater and greater power over the rest of the world, America’s leading voice of dissent needs to be heard more than ever. In over thirty timely, accessible and urgent essays, Chomsky cogently examines the burning issues of our post-9/11 world, covering the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Bush presidency and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. This is an essential collection, from a vital and authoritative perspective.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39677 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
Chomsky has an authority granted by brilliance (Sunday Times )

Above all, he makes his readers think (The Good Book Guide )

One of our most valued political thinkers. His commitment to presenting his findings lucidly makes him one of the most useful (Independent on Sunday )

About the Author
Noam Chomsky has been described as the world's greatest public intellectual. He is the author of numerous bestselling political books, including Hegemony or Survival, Imperial Ambitions, Failed States and Perilous Power, all of which are published by Hamish Hamilton and Penguin. Noam Chomsky is a professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT, and is widely credited with having revolutionized modern linguistics.

Customer Reviews

A fine sampler of the toughest political thinker of our time
I'm ashamed to see how few reviews I've done of Chomsky's books. His deadpan presentation of the evidence has profoundly influenced the way I see the world since I was in my early 20s.

His method is simple. He doesn't construct a big conspiracy theory based on shreds of evidence. He starts from the standpoint that the political processes that we really need to scrutinise are the ones we have a chance of influencing - i.e., our own. From here, he looks at what our politicians say they are doing, and compares this with what they are verifiably reported as doing, and also with what the mainstream media says they are doing. None of this is any more than the scientific method as applied to media studies.

From this method, he draws down devastatingly critical results, in which politicans are condemned by the facts that their own organisations have elicited. Chomsky can ruin your faith in your elected leaders like nobody else. However, he is animated by a vision of freedom and justice that is truly democratic and egalitarian - and he is not blind to the fact that there are people out there who don't believe in freedom or justice but in theocracy. He just wants to point out that some of those people form the backbone of the US government.

This is a selection of op-ed columns, hardly the kind of book-length closely reasoned argument that any Chomsky-experienced radical will be looking for, but a bracing shot in the arm for anyone who just feels bewildered and confused by the whole situation and wants someone to suggest a direction towards clarity. Chomsky is by nature not a guru, positively allergic to 'followers' - merely someone with more access to information than most of us, and so disinclined to tell people what to do. But this little book is a small light that may help to illuminate the road towards an exit from the confusion and impotence that paralyse us every day.

Brilliant essays which illuminate the post-9/11 world.
This collection of Professor Chomsky's hard-hitting essays, previously published in newspapers world-wide during the period 2002-2008, includes persuasive pieces on Iraq, Iran, the 'war on terror', the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, US domestic issues and the failures of the George W Bush administration.
It's disgraceful that Noam Chomsky, one of the world's leading intellectuals, is treated as a pariah in his own country but these clearly argued essays brilliantly illuminate the post-9/11 world and deserve to have the widest possible readership.

A useful collection (albeit repetitive)
Chomsky has for a long time been rightly seen as one of the most incisive left wing critics of the US government and its foreign policy, applying the intellectual firepower which earlier had made him a leading thinker in linguistics to political matters.

This collection provides a selection of his "op-ed" thought pieces featured on the same pages as the newspaper's editorials for the New York Times syndication from September 2002 to March 2007. Since each item is limited to around 1,000 words they are easy to dip into and present an exercise in being concise on whatever the chosen topic is (the addition of subsequent footnotes for the book is mainly data sources).

As such they are a fascinating overview of events from post 9/11 through the Iraq conflict up to the growing US pressure on Iran, and while not all observations may have proven correct they do show a great skill to "think outside the box" against the US government policies and the general more establishment standard of other US op-ed writers over this period (there is a fascinating Foreword essay on this area by Peter Hart).

The downside (and my 3 star rating) is that if you have read the earlier longer book "Failed States" you will see many of the same themes featuring again in the shorter vignettes here. Also because of the nature of newspaper writing on matters as they develop, there is some repetition and overlap even between the pieces in this book.

The other observation is that while Chomsky is at his most provocative on US foreign policy in all its manifestations, what a number of these pieces reflect is that he is less effective when covering the US domestic issues. Whether it is US social security funding problems or presidential elections, his thoughts are much more lightweight and less incisive.