An Oasis of Sanity in A Desert of Madness
Discover sanity amid chaos with our curated book list—featuring Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, and Deterring Democracy—offering critical insight into media, power, and history.
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Understanding Power
by Peter R. Mitchell
An introduction to Noam Chomsky's views on the politics of power discusses third-party politics in the United States, the suppression of dissent, U.S. foreign and domestic policy, and the role of the media.
![9-11 [neuf-onze] Cover](https://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/1583224890.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg)
Book
9-11 [neuf-onze]
by Noam Chomsky
Based on a composite of interviews conducted in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, Chomsky, one of America's most esteemed and influential radical thinkers, uses his impeccable knowledge of globalisation and US foreign policy in the Middle East to shed light on Osama bin Laden and the long-term implications of America's military attacks abroad. Speaking out against responding to violence with violence, as such tactics only succeed in undermining democracy in any meaningful form, he demands policies of a more long-term, humane and honorable nature.
Book
Deterring Democracy
by Noam Chomsky
In this highly praised and widely debated book, America's leading dissident intellectual offers a revelatory portrait of the American empire and the danger it poses for democracy, both at home and abroad. Chomsky details the major shift in global politics and economic potency and reveals the potentially catastrophic consequences of this new imbalance.
Book
Manufacturing Consent
by Edward S. Herman
A "compelling indictment of the news media's role in covering up errors and deceptions" (The New York Times Book Review) due to the underlying economics of publishing—from famed scholars Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. With a new introduction. In this pathbreaking work, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order. Based on a series of case studies—including the media’s dichotomous treatment of “worthy” versus “unworthy” victims, “legitimizing” and “meaningless” Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina—Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media’s behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media’s handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media’s treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.
