Understanding Power
"A major new collection from "arguably the most important intellectual alive" (The New York Times). Noam Chomsky is universally accepted as one of the preeminent public intellectuals of the modern era. Over the past thirty years, broadly diverse audiences have gathered to attend his sold-out lectures. Now, in Understanding Power, Peter Mitchell and John Schoeffel have assembled the best of Chomsky's recent talks on the past, present, and future of the politics of power. 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."
Stats for nerds
27recommend
57mentions
43people
2009–2026years
61% recommend37% neutral2% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Aaron Swartz's most famous book recommendation, in a now 20 years old blogpost ( http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/epiphany ), Chomsky's Understanding Power, contains many examples of such cases of those in power, big corporations and the government getting away with crimes. I should probably reread it, even though it can be depressing - but not quite as depressing as Manufacturing Consent.
RIP Aaron.
- I discovered Noam Chomsky last year. Read “How the world works”, “Understanding Power” and “Manufacturing Consent”. Absolutely blown away.
- For fiction no idea, really hard to come up with a criterion and that is great actually.
For non-fiction, by far the one that had the most novelty factor and effect of my worldview probably Chomsky - Understanding Power. Not 100% because it's almost a tie with Manufacturing Consent - this one being much darker.
- +1 for Understanding Power. It taught me how to apply my research skills to things that matter, as well as how to read the news.
- Understanding Power is a good compilation of his writing and talks on many, many different topics.
I had probably a dozen epiphanies reading that book.
After that, you could read manufacturing consent.
- Manufacturing Consent is such an interesting book. The framework of analysis Herman and Chomsky present is general enough that it, while approaching almost 40 years old, still very accurately seems to describe the current media landscape.
Chomsky is a famous left-leaning anarchist, and I find it interesting that his analysis isn't "the media is too right-wing" or "the media is too left-wing". Instead, his analysis is primarily about how power begets power -- even at the level of the local paper.
This[0] short 3-minute video does a fine job of letting him explain his position on media bias while not really going into the nitty gritty details. His books, however, do go into the nitty gritty details while still being relatively easy to read.
For anyone interested in Chomsky I highly recommend "Understanding Power"[1] as the intro to his views on the world. It's not as detailed in every topic as many of his other books and is primarily conversational in style - owing to it being transcribed discussions with audience members after he has held a speech.
[0]: https://youtu.be/x60pSXlwmNE
[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/194805.Understanding_Pow...
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