New Releases by Noam Chomsky

In a series of enlightening and wide-ranging discussions, all published here for the first time, Chomsky radically reinterprets the events of the past three decades, covering topics from foreign policy during Vietnam to the decline of welfare under the Clinton administration. And as he elucidates the connection between America''s imperialistic foreign policy and the decline of domestic social services, 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, Understanding Power offers a sweeping critique of the world around us and is definitive Chomsky. Characterized by Chomsky''s accessible and informative style, this is the ideal book for those new to his work as well as for those who have been listening for years.

Noam Chomsky’s backpocket classic on wartime propaganda and opinion control begins by asserting two models of democracy—one in which the public actively participates, and one in which the public is manipulated and controlled. According to Chomsky, "propaganda is to democracy as the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state," and the mass media is the primary vehicle for delivering propaganda in the United States. From an examination of how Woodrow Wilson’s Creel Commission "succeeded, within six months, in turning a pacifist population into a hysterical, war-mongering population," to Bush Sr.''s war on Iraq, Chomsky examines how the mass media and public relations industries have been used as propaganda to generate public support for going to war. Chomsky further touches on how the modern public relations industry has been influenced by Walter Lippmann’s theory of "spectator democracy," in which the public is seen as a "bewildered herd" that needs to be directed, not empowered; and how the public relations industry in the United States focuses on "controlling the public mind," and not on informing it. Media Control is an invaluable primer on the secret workings of disinformation in democratic societies.

Chomsky observes the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a "Path to a Better World," while chronicling how far off the trail the United States is with respect to actual political practice and conduct. Analysing the contradictions of U.S. power while illustrating the real progress won by sustained popular struggle, Chomsky cuts through official political rhetoric to examine how the United States not only violates the UD, but at times uses it as a weapon to wield against designated enemies.

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 center of practically every major debate over America''s role in the world, one finds Noam Chomsky''s ideas—sometimes attacked, sometimes studiously ignored, but always a powerful presence. Drawing from his published and unpublished work, The Chomsky Reader reveals the awesome range of this ever-critical mind—from global questions of war and peace to the most intricate questions of human intelligence, IQ, and creativity. It reveals the underlying radical coherency of his view of the world—from his enormously influential attacks on America''s role in Vietnam to his perspective on Nicaragua and Central America today. Chomsky''s challenge to accepted wisdom about Israel and the Palestinians has caused a furor in America, as have his trenchant essays on the real nature of terrorism in our age. No one has dissected more graphically the character of the Cold War consensus and the way it benefits the two superpowers, or argued more thoughtfully for a shared elitist ethos in liberalism and communism. No one has exposed more logically America''s acclaimed freedoms as masking irresponsible power and unjustified privilege, or argued quite so insistently that the “free press” is part of a stultifying conformity that pervades all aspects of American intellectual life. In a lengthy interview with the editor, Chomsky discussed his thought in the context of his personal history.

Back in print, the seminal work by ''''arguably the most important intellectual alive '''' (The New York Times). American Power and the New Mandarins is Noam Chomsky''s first political book, widely considered to be among the most cogent and powerful statements against the American war in Vietnam. Long out of print, this collection of early, seminal essays helped to establish Chomsky as a leading critic of United States foreign policy. These pages mount a scathing critique of the contradictions of the war, and an indictment of the mainstream, liberal intellectuals - the ''''new mandarins '''' - who furnished what Chomsky argued was the necessary ideological cover for the horrors visited on the Vietnamese people. As America''s foreign entanglements deepen by the month, Chomsky''s lucid analysis is a sobering reminder of the perils of imperial diplomacy. With a new foreword by Howard Zinn, author of A People''s History of the United States, American Power and the New Mandarins is a renewed call for independent analysis of America''s role in the world.

In this extraordinarily original and profound work, Noam Chomsky discusses themes in the study of language and mind since the end of the sixteenth century in order to explain the motivations and methods that underlie his work in linguistics, the science of mind, and even politics. This edition includes a new and specially written introduction by James McGilvray, contextualising the work for the twenty-first century. It has been made more accessible to a larger audience; all the French and German in the original edition has been translated, and the notes and bibliography have been brought up to date. The relationship between the original edition (published in 1966) and contemporary biolinguistic work is also explained. This challenging volume is an important contribution to the study of language and mind, and to the history of these studies since the end of the sixteenth century.

Bringing together leading researchers in linguistics, psycholinguistics, language acquisition, cognitive neuroscience, comparative cognitive psychology, and evolutionary biology, this book presents an account of what we know and would like to know about language, mind, and brain.

From the world''s foremost intellectual activist, an irrefutable analysis of America''s pursuit of total domination and the catastrophic consequences that are sure to follow The United States is in the process of staking out not just the globe but the last unarmed spot in our neighborhood-the heavens-as a militarized sphere of influence. Our earth and its skies are, for the Bush administration, the final frontiers of imperial control. In Hegemony or Survival , Noam Chomsky investigates how we came to this moment, what kind of peril we find ourselves in, and why our rulers are willing to jeopardize the future of our species. With the striking logic that is his trademark, Chomsky dissects America''s quest for global supremacy, tracking the U.S. government''s aggressive pursuit of policies intended to achieve "full spectrum dominance" at any cost. He lays out vividly how the various strands of policy-the militarization of space, the ballistic-missile defense program, unilateralism, the dismantling of international agreements, and the response to the Iraqi crisis-cohere in a drive for hegemony that ultimately threatens our survival. In our era, he argues, empire is a recipe for an earthly wasteland. Lucid, rigorous, and thoroughly documented, Hegemony or Survival promises to be Chomsky''s most urgent and sweeping work in years, certain to spark widespread debate.

Presents a collection of essays on language and mind. This book brings the author''s influential approach into the twenty-first century. The chapters 1-6 present his early work on the nature and acquisition of language as a genetically-endowed, biological system, the rules and principles of which we acquire an internalized knowledge.

Based on Chomsky''s 1978 Woodbridge Lectures, this book combines a study of linguistics with our growing knowledge of the human mind & our understanding of the philosophy of language. This new edition features two new essays.

Indispensable look at American military involvement in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos until 1970.

An indispensable guide through the work of the world''s most influential living intellectual.

Chomsky S Second Major Collection Of Political Writings, Following His Pathbreaking American Power And The New Mandarins An Essential Record Of Chomsky S Political And Social Thought As It Was Sharpened On The Upheavals In Domestic And International Affairs Of The Early 1970S, For Reasons Of State Is A Major Addition To The Intellectual History Of The Vietnam Era. It Includes Articles On The War In Vietnam And The ''Wider War'' In Laos And Cambodia, An Extensive Dissection Of The Pentagon Papers, Reflections On The Role Of Force In International Affairs, Essays On Civil Disobedience And The Role Of The University, And A Now-Classic Introduction To Anarchism. These Contributions Reveal Very Different Facets Of Chomsky S Powers As A Thinker, From His Uncanny Ability To Join Abstract Philosophical Considerations With The Concrete Political Realities Of His Time, To His Singular Capacity To Mount Withering, Fact-Based Critiques Of American Foreign Policy.

In On Nature and Language Noam Chomsky develops his thinking on the relation between language, mind and brain, integrating current research in linguistics into the burgeoning field of neuroscience. The volume begins with a lucid introduction by the editors Belletti and Rizzi. This is followed by some of Chomsky''s recent writings on these themes, together with a penetrating interview in which Chomsky provides a clear introduction to the Minimalist Program. The volume concludes with an essay on the role of intellectuals in society and government.

The most up-to-date reflections on international terrorism by America''s leading dissident, Noam Chomsky.

Outstanding and unique contribution to the philosophical study of language and mind by Noam Chomsky.

A collection of eleven conversations in which American philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky and Mexican-based professor of sociology Heinz Dieterich discuss key events in the politics and history of Latin America.

Continuing his bestselling interviews with David Barsamian, Chomsky provides a road map to the concentration of corporate power. Amidst a devastating sketch of the ongoing destruction of civil society, Class Warfare unearths a cause for optimism in the ongoing struggle for human freedom. National ads/media.

The Minimalist Program consists of four recent essays that attempt to situate linguistic theory in the broader cognitive sciences. In these essays the minimalist approach to linguistic theory is formulated and progressively developed. Building on the theory of principles and parameters and, in particular, on principles of economy of derivation and representation, the minimalist framework takes Universal Grammar as providing a unique computational system, with derivations driven by morphological properties, to which the syntactic variation of languages is also restricted. Within this theoretical framework, linguistic expressions are generated by optimally efficient derivations that must satisfy the conditions that hold on interface levels, the only levels of linguistic representation. The interface levels provide instructions to two types of performance systems, articulatory-perceptual and conceptual-intentional. All syntactic conditions, then, express properties of these interface levels, reflecting the interpretive requirements of language and keeping to very restricted conceptual resources. The Essays Principles and Parameters Theory Some Notes on Economy of Derivation and Representation A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory Categories and Transformations in a Minimalist Framework

In his 1988 CBC Massey Lectures, Noam Chomsky inquires into the nature of the media in a political system where the population cannot be disciplined by force and thus must be subjected to more subtle forms of ideological control. Specific cases are illustrated in detail, using the U.S. media primarily but also media in other societies. Chomsky considers how the media might be democratized (as part of the general problem of developing more democratic institutions) in order to offer citizens broader and more meaningful participation in social and political life.

Noam Chomsky, the left''s leading critic of government policy, power, and language, takes on the international scene since 1945, devoting particular attention to events following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In World Orders Old and New, he develops an eloquent, incendiary, and forceful critique of Western government, from imperialist foreign policies to the Clinton administration''s empty promises to the poor. Chomsky offers a skeptic''s guide to the modern language of power, taking readers on a journey through the Middle East, Central America, Eastern Europe, and other regions of the world where the U.S. makes myriad efforts to "maintain stability" or "restore hope". World Orders Old and New introduces readers to the so-called New World Order, where hopes for international peace and democracy have been challenged by numerous outbreaks of ethnic and regional violence. With characteristic freshness and intensity, Chomsky reviews the history of superpower efforts to check territorial aggression, citing the war in the Gulf as a prime example of Western bravado, and examines these efforts from his own unique political perspective. Turning to America, he uncovers the disappointments and doublespeak of the Clinton administration''s domestic economic program. In Chomsky''s view, the current president''s hypocrisy is matched only by the distortions of his policies by the media, especially the New York Times. Concluding with an assessment of the recent Israeli-Palestinian accord - in which Chomsky expresses concern for the victimization of the Palestinians - this major thinker of our time focuses his no-holds-barred attention once more on the powerless, the power-hungry, and the power-mongers inour increasingly global community. Impressively researched and written with the linguist''s precision and flair for language, World Orders Old and New offers a stimulating, fresh perspective from which to view an intellectual culture defined by such dubious political critics as Rush Limbaugh and Dan Quayle.

This scathing critique of U.S. political culture is a brilliant analysis of the Iran-contra scandal. Chomsky offers a message of hope, reminding us that resistance is possible, necessary, and effective.

Language and Problems of Knowledge is Noam Chomsky''s most accessible statement on the nature, origins, and current concerns of the field of linguistics. He frames the lectures with four fundamental questions: What do we know when we are able to speak and understand a language? How is this knowledge acquired? How do we use this knowledge? What are the physical mechanisms involved in the representation, acquisition, and use of this knowledge? Starting from basic concepts, Chomsky sketches the present state of our answers to these questions and offers prospects for future research. Much of the discussion revolves around our understanding of basic human nature (that we are unique in being able to produce a rich, highly articulated, and complex language on the basis of quite rudimentary data), and it is here that Chomsky''s ideas on language relate to his ideas on politics.The initial versions of these lectures were given at the Universidad Centroamericana in Managua, Nicaragua, in March 1986. A parallel set of lectures on contemporary political issues given at the same time has been published by South End Press under the title On Power and Ideology: The Managua Lectures. Language and Problems of Knowledge is sixteenth in the series Current Studies in Linguistics, edited by Jay Keyser.

This monograph explores several complex questions concerning the theories of government and bounding, including, in particular, the possibility of a unified approach to these topics. Starting with the intuitive idea that certain categories in certain configurations are barriers to government and movement, it considers whether the same categories are barriers in the two instances or whether one barrier suffices to block government (a stricter and "more local" relation) while more than one barrier inhibits movement, perhaps in a graded manner. Any proposal concerning the formulation of the concept of government has intricate consequences, and many of the empirical phenomena that appear to be relevant are still poorly understood. Similarly, judgments about the theory of movement also involve a number of different factors, including sensitivity to lexical choice. Therefore, Chomsky proceeds on the basis of speculations as to the proper idealization of complex phenomena - how they should be sorted into a variety of interacting systems (some of which remain quite obscure), which may tentatively be put aside to be explained by independent (sometimes unknown) factors, and which may be considered relevant to the subsystems under investigation. "Barriers considers several possible paths through the maze of possibilities that arise. It sets the subtheory context (x-bar theory, theory of movement, and government) for determining what constitutes a barrier and explores two concepts of barrier - maximal projection and the minimality condition - and their manifestations in and implications for proper government, subjacency, island violations, vacuous movement, parasitic gaps, and A-chains. NoamChomsky is Institute Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT. "Barriers is Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 13.

Taking a historical perspective, Chomsky argues for immediate US withdrawal from Central America. Turning the Tide brings together analytic rigour and passionate moral commitment.

While the study of government and binding is an outgrowth of Chomsky''s earlier work in transformational grammar, it represents a significant shift in focus and a new direction of investigation into the fundamentals of linguistic theory.