Monday, October 17, 2011

257: Hopes and Prospects by Noam Chomsky

Hopes and Prospects

With someone so prolific it's sometimes difficult to know where to start. This collection is a good start for those unfamiliar with Noam Chomsky's work. In this collection of essays Chomsky touches on issues he's been writing about for decades.-- the US empire and the double-standards the US applies to other nations, but not to itself, the failures of the intellectual class, the collusion between corporate media and corporate government. He also offers some insight and background to various resistance movements across the globe.

Why this is progressive/liberal: Chomsky is probably the leading progressive intellectual in the United States. I've seen plenty of ad hominem attacks on Chomsky, but never a substantive rebuttal. Or at least, not one I could take seriously. That's not to say people haven't tried, but there are very few people in the world whose mastery of facts and history can match Chomsky's. There is the occasional error, and you can quibble with some of his sources or conclusions, but on the whole he provides clear, articulate, well-reasoned, and astonishingly well-researched arguments supporting progressive principles.

Buy the Kindle version: Hopes and Prospects by Noam Chomsky

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