The Chomsky Reader

by Noam Chomsky

Book Overview

The Chomsky Reader brings together for the first time the political thought of American's leading dissident intellectual--"arguably the most important intellectual alive" (The New York Times). At the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394751736
• Release Date: September 1987
• Publisher: Pantheon
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.2" x 1.1" x 6.2"

Customer Reviews

A great resource

The Chomsky reader is a must for anyone, liberal or conservative, who seeks insight away from the mainstream media. I think he is overboard at times but the viewpoint is unvaluable and stimulating.

Don't know Chomsky yet? This is for you.

This book should be required reading for all political science degree majors. Actually it should be required for all students. It takes an interesting look at the things most Americans ignore, either by choice or out of ignorance. This is a great book for first time readers of Chomsky. He doesn't ask you to know any background information before reading it. He provides all of the information and evidence you need to understand his point of view. Yet, the essays in this book are powerful and thought provoking. It's completely engaging.

Truth, Language and Understanding: A Workout

Dear Colleagues, Noam Chomsky understands the power of language, the nature of language, how language can be used and how language is frequently abused by those who would seek to lead us, influence us, beguile us, repress us or simply rip-us off for as long as possible.Noam Chomsky makes people think, he poises some of the difficult questions, and will maybe have you struggling to justify some of your best and long held beliefs in people and society. In this way, this book is both a gentle introduction and a great mental workout, if nothing else, and it can be much more.Starting with this book by Chomsky if you haven't read any of his stuff before is like deciding on a diet and workout plan that is neither drastic or radical, but eases the reader into the Chomsky ways of seeing things, of gathering facts, of interpreting language and of developing ideas and analysis. Chomsky is nearly always delivering arguments that are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive, which leads for well focussed and sometimes overly-knowledge rich text, but it's well worth the effort - in my book Chomsky is one of the greatest thinkers of the last 100 years - even if you, like me, will disagree with at least 50 percent of Chomsky's conclusions.Regards,Martyn_jones@iniciativas.com

Indispensible

An indispensible anthology from America's foremost foreign policy critic. James Peck, the book's editor, presents an excellent introduction, outlining core themes that unite the wide-ranging material. There is much that is familiar to long-time Chomsky readers, but much that is also less familiar, such as personal background that may help explain the MIT professor's remarkably creative and heretical career. Included among the miscellainea, is a section on his work in linguistics, a critique of B.F. Skinner's behavioral approach, and a defense of freedom and equality-- a compatibility often derided in more conservative circles. Of course, there are the more familiar researches on Latin America, Southeast Asia, and other frontier hotspots that define the American imperium. Unfortunately missing because of publishing date are researches on Washington's more recent adventures in Panama, Iraq, and Yugoslavia. Though the tune may change, the music remains the same. At bottom - and what renders the MIT professor a non-person to state and media alike - is his view of Washington not as vaunted leader of the free world, but as a self-serving imperial power, neither better nor worse than its predecessors, but with greatly expanded reach and killing power. To put the point briefly: behind sterling academic and intellectual credentials, he mounts a leftish, but non-Marxist, expose' of Washington's most cherished foreign policy pieties. Just as effectively, he is careful not to put forth a central thesis, theory or organizing idea, that might distract from the damning indictment his case studies provide of global interventionism. Shrewdly, he lets the unexpurgated record speak for itself without the distraction of abstract issues, which allows the reader to draw his or her own conclusions as to ultimate causes of this imperial behavior. Challenging the official record is, of course, no easy task. If America behaves like a typical great power, it also filters its self-perception as a great power must. Which is to say, that like other empire builders of the modern era, Washington must disguise its imperial actions in moralistic terms to make them palatable to publics and elites alike. Thus, self-deception in America operates, and must operate, on a grand scale, as witnessed in recent interventions in Kosovo, Kuwait, Nicaragua, and a host of other Pentagon undertakings. All are retailed to an ideologically conditioned public as humanitarian rescues. Nonetheless, should this prism fail, as in Vietnam, Chomsky harbors no optimistic expectations as to how the public might react. Disillusioned voters might continue pragmatic support of the imperial regime or they might not. What is interesting is that the regime acts as though it can't take the risk-- thus the rigid ideological controls that continue to manage popular perceptions regardless of the facts. The latter of course makes up Chomsky's target of debunking attack. The book can only be considered anti

Excellent book

This is a great way to get into the works of Chomsky. Chomsky reveals the bias in the media, showing all the pieces of information which were cut off from the mainstream press. He points out the real goal of the US and of the media, and makes you think before you listen. An excellent book, I give it 5 stars.