Reviews for Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

The average rating for Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-12-19 00:00:00 Martin Egan This really is the indispensable Chomsky. It's a summary of his views on just about everything. Many of Noam's views are very left wing, progressive, anti-American policy, anti-Israel policy ... so a lot of people care not much for him. He is to me the most rational, truth seeking person I've read. The book is not "writings" of Chomsky's. Rather it is edited transcriptions of Q&A sessions from a great number of teach-ins and college talks that he has given over the years. The editing has been done to add foot-notes, and of course to make both questions and answers read better and be more succinct in their wording and give greater depth to the answers (I would guess) than was done on the fly. In that sense, they are closer to writings than most Q&A transcriptions would be. Ch 1. Weekend Teach-In: Opening Session (primarily Rowe Mass., April 1989) Ch 2. Teach in: Over Coffee (ditto) Ch 3. Teach-In: Evening (ditto) Ch 4. Colloquy (primarily Fort Collins CO, April 1990) Ch 5. Ruling the World (discussions in NY, MA, MD, CO, IL and Ontario, 1990 and 93-96) Ch 6. Community Activists (discussions in British Columbia, MA, IL, MD and WY, 1989 and 93-96) Ch 7. Intellectuals and Social Change (discussions at Woods Hole and Rowe MA, 93-96) Ch 8. Popular Struggle (discussions in MA, MD, Ontario, CA and WY, 1989, '94 & '94) Ch 9. Movement Organizing (discussions at Woods Hole MA, 93-96) Ch. 10. Turning Point (discussions in IL, NJ, MA, NY and MD, 94-96 & '99) Each of these chapters is in turn divided into 10-20 subtopics (all given in the TOC) For example, Chapter 7 has the following subtopics: - The Leninist/Capitalist Intelligentsia - Marxist "Theory" and Intellectual Fakery - Ideological Control in the Sciences and Humanities - The Function of the Schools - Subtler Methods of Control - Cruder Methods of Control - Forging Working-Class Culture - The Fraud of Modern Economics - The Real Market - Automation - A Revolutionary Change in Moral Values The footnotes are not in the book itself. They are downloadable from a web-site as a PDF document. This I have done. It is 1.7 MB, 450 pages long - the footnotes. These footnotes are not only references but additional explanatory information. The book has a pretty good index. The book is more wide ranging than many of Chomsky's other publications, hence is not what you want if you only want his views on Media, or U.S. Foreign Policy. But making up for this, it probably gives a pretty good sample of his views on a full range of topics. I use the word "views" here to try to be non-argumentative. But for a vast amount of this stuff, the evidence that Chomsky present qualifies the positions he outlines not as simply his views, but as flat out the truth. But it's a truth that the average American (unlike in many cases the average European) has no idea about - because the mainstream U.S. Media just refuses to print factual news which runs contrary to the U.S. exceptionalist view which we have of ourselves - news which commonly appears in the British, French, German, even Israeli press. Rather than try to give any sort of summary of Chomsky's insights (there, a better word than "views"), I'll just conclude by quoting a paragraph from the back cover of the book. In a series of enlightening and wide-ranging discussions ... Chomsky radically reinterprets the events of the past three decades [the last decades of the 20th century] covering topis from foreign policy during the Vietnam War to the decline of welfare under the Clinton administration. And as he elucidates the connection between America's imperialistic foreign policy and social inequalities at home, Chomsky also discerns the necessary steps to take toward social change. With an eye to political activism and the media's role in popular struggle, as well as U.S. foreign and domestic policy, (the book) is definitive Chomsky. That it is.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-11-30 00:00:00 Kim Ani Apart from his scientific work on linguistics (notably his groundbreaking generative grammar theory), Noam Chomsky has always been quite outspoken about his political views, ever since his criticism of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He also contributed quite substantially to media studies and the questioning of propaganda in America (see Manufacturing Consent). Today, albeit in his 90s, Chomsky is still quite combative and a towering ' in fact, a rock-star-like ' figure in left-libertarian and anarcho-syndicalist academic circles. This book is a sort of fix-up (with abundant footnotes) of several talks Chomsky gave in the U.S. around the 1990s (during the Clinton/Bush administrations). Essentially, Chomsky provides answers to questions from his audience. And although most of these questions were dealing with current affairs at the time (now a bit outdated, obviously), the essence of Chomsky's answers is still quite relevant some twenty-odd years later. He covers everything from media manipulation by corporate interests to freedom of speech, religious fanaticism and terrorism, state capitalism vs. communal libertarianism, the military-industrial complex and the nuclear threat, the Middle-East conflict, the Gulf War, the situation in East-Timor, climate change, activism and resistance and the charlatanism of post-modern thinkers (worth watching in hindsight: his 1971 debate with Michel Foucault on human nature, at the height of the antagonism between "continental" and "analytic" philosophy). In short, the whole thing is an analysis, from different angles, of the U.S. Totalitarian Empire State. It is indeed a fascinating book, although some of what Chomsky says sounds quite a bit like a conspiracy theory. It is also perplexing that he hasn't been much intimidated by the oppressive system he has been denouncing for so many years. Quite indispensable nonetheless.