The Essential Chomsky or Defending Mother Earth

The Essential Chomsky

Author: Noam Chomsky

In a single volume, the seminal writings of the world's leading philosopher, linguist, and critic, published to coincide with his eightieth birthday.

For the past forty years Noam Chomsky's writings on politics and language have established him as a preeminent public intellectual and as one of the most original and wide-ranging political and social critics of our time. Among the seminal figures in linguistic theory over the past century, since the 1960s Chomsky has also secured a place as perhaps the leading dissident voice in the United States.

Chomsky's many bestselling works—including Manufacturing Consent, Hegemony or Survival, Understanding Power, and Failed States—have served as essential touchstones for dissidents, activists, scholars, and concerned citizens on subjects ranging from the media to human rights to intellectual freedom. In particular, Chomsky's scathing critiques of the U.S. wars in Vietnam, Central America, and the Middle East have furnished a widely accepted intellectual inspiration for antiwar movements over nearly four decades.

The Essential Chomsky assembles the core of his most important writings, including excerpts from his most influential texts over the past forty years. Here is an unprecedented, comprehensive overview of Chomsky's thought.

Table of Contents:

Foreword     vii
A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior     1
Preface to Aspects of the Theory of Syntax     31
Methodological Preliminaries     33
The Responsibility of Intellectuals     39
On Resistance     63
Language and Freedom     75
Notes on Anarchism     92
The Rule of Force in International Affairs     105
Watergate: A Skeptical View     134
The Remaking of History     141
Foreign Policy and the Intelligentsia     160
The United States and East Timor     187
The Origins of the "Special Relationship"     198
Planning for Global Hegemony     223
The View Beyond: Prospects for the Study of Mind     232
Containing the Enemy     257
Introduction to The Minimalist Program     277
New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind     285
Intentional Ignorance and Its Uses     300
A World Without War     325
Reflections on 9-11     341
Language and the Brain     347
United States-Israel-Palestine     368
Imperial Grand Strategy     373
Afterword to Failed States     403
Acknowledgments     415
Permissions     417
Notes     421
Select Bibliography of Works   Noam Chomsky     485
Index     491

Look this: 20 Common Problems or Indian Head Massage

Defending Mother Earth: Native American Perspectives on Environmental Justice

Author: Jace Weaver

Defending Mother Earth brings together important Native voices to address urgent issues of environmental devastation as they affect the indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. The essays document a range of ecological disasters, including the devastating effects of mining, water pollution, nuclear power facilities, and toxic waste dumps. In an expression of "environmental racism," such hazards are commonly located on or near Indian lands. Many of the authors included in Defending Mother Earth are engaged in struggles to resist these dangers. As their essays consistently demonstrate, these struggles are intimately tied to the assertion of Indian sovereignty and the affirmation of Native culture: the Earth is, indeed, Mother to these nations. In his concluding theological reflection, George Tinker argues that the affirmation of Indian spiritual values, especially the attitude toward the Earth, may hold out a key to the survival of the planet and all its peoples.

Publishers Weekly

This anthology of 11 essays is the result of an unusual conference of Native North American environmental activists held at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver in March 1995. It stands in stark contrast to other such collections, because it includes among its writers none of the more well-known non-Native American environmentalists. As such, it provides an enormously fascinating examination of the present environmental crisis from both academic and administrative perspectives from within the Native American community. Introduced by Russell Means, co-founder of the American Indian Movement, and edited by attorney Jace Weaver, this collection includes contributions from Margaret Sam-Cromarty, who fought the disastrous James Bay project in Canada; Phyllis Young, who fought the ESTI Coal Slurry Pipeline; and, Justine Smith, who opposes Exxon's massive Mole Lake project in Wisconsin. These authors write not only with passion but also with scholarly acumen and logic. This is an important and eloquent work that few books on ecology can match. (Oct.)