Chomsky's classic back-pocket primer on U.S. government propaganda and media bias, now available in an edition expanded to include his comments regarding media coverage of terrorism and U.S. foreign policy in a post-September 11 world.

An eye-opening introduction to the timelessly relevant ideas of Noam Chomsky, "arguably the most important intellectual alive" (The New York Times ), this book is a penetrating, illusion-shattering look at how things really work Offering something not found anywhere else, How the World Works is pure Chomsky, but tailored for those who are new to his work. The book is made up of meticulously edited speeches and interviews, and every dazzling idea and penetrating insight is kept intact and delivered in clear, accessible, reader-friendly prose. Originally published as a series of short works— What Uncle Sam Really Wants ; The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many ; Secrets, Lies and Democracy ; and The Common Good —these volumes together sold nearly 600,000 copies. Now collected into one comprehensive anthology, How the World Works reveals how Chomsky’s then-revolutionary ideas have only become more relevant as time has gone by. From the concept that extreme wealth and democracy cannot exist side-by-side; to how the assumptions of mainstream media purposefully limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion; to the decline of unions and workers’ rights thanks to corporations and their unconstrained quest for profit, Chomsky’s prescient theories of the future—not only the future of the United States, but of the world—make it very clear that our society is paying the price now for not heeding him then.

Dissects the aftermath of the war in Southeast Asia, the refugee problem, the Vietnam/Cambodia conflict and the Pol Pot regime. The companion book to The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism: The Political Economy of Human Rights: Vol. I."[A valuable, carefully documented assessment of Western reporting on post-1975 Indochina. Especially comprehensive in its treatment of Cambodia, it provides a trenchant -- and healthy -- critique of news media coverage that has usually been as tendentious as that dealing with the early years of U.S. military intervention in Indochina."--George Kahin, Cornell University

Immediately after the terrorist attacks of September 11, Noam Chomsky's always tightly scheduled life ratcheted several levels higher in intensity. In the months that followed, he gave a great many public talks and countless interviews, many of them with the foreign media, who turned to him as one of the small handful of American intellectuals who stood opposed to the Bush administration's aggressive military response to the attacks. With unflagging conviction, Chomsky must have repeated a thousand times his argument that we cannot address terrorism of the weak against the powerful without also confronting "the unmentionable but far more extreme terrorism of the powerful against the weak". The argument, supported with an ever-expanding array of historical case studies, documents, and analyses, fell on deaf ears in Washington and in the mainstream American media, but resonated with large audiences in the United states and abroad who turned once agin to Chomsky for the voice of reason and consience that he has provided for decades. Chomsky's voice also reached Japan, where I live, in the form of a translation of his book 9-11 (subtitled in Japanese, "America Is Not Qualified to Retaliate!"), which was rushed into publication at the end of November. Inspired by the book, a producer at an independent Japanese film company and the author began to make plans to produce a documentary about Chomsky and his perspective on terrorism and American power. This book is an outgrowth of that effort