Who Rules the World?

by Noam Chomsky

Overview

A New York Times Bestseller

With a New Afterword

The world’s leading intellectual offers a probing examination of the nature of U.S. policies post-9/11, and the perils of valuing power above democracy and human rights.

In an incisive, thorough analysis of the current international situation, Noam Chomsky examines the way that the United States, despite the rise of Europe and Asia, still largely sets the terms of global discourse. Drawing on a wide range of examples, from the sordid history of U.S. involvement with Cuba to the sanctions on Iran, he details how America’s rhetoric of freedom and human rights so often diverges from its actions. He delves deep into the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel-Palestine, providing unexpected and nuanced insights into the workings of imperial power on our increasingly chaotic planet. And, in a new afterword, he addresses the election of Donald Trump and what it shows about American society.

Fierce, unsparing, and meticulously documented, Who Rules the World? delivers the indispensable understanding of the central issues of our time that we have come to expect from Chomsky.

An American Empire Project

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250131089
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	05/02/2017
Series:	American Empire Project
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	122,318
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Noam Chomsky is the author of numerous bestselling political works, including Hegemony or Survival and Failed States. A laureate professor at the University of Arizona and professor emeritus of linguistics and philosophy at MIT, he is widely credited with having revolutionized modern linguistics. He lives in Tuscon, Arizona.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. The Responsibility of Intellectuals, Redux
2. Terrorists Wanted the World Over
3. The Torture Memos and Historical Amnesia
4. The Invisible Hand of Power
5. American Decline: Causes and Consequences
6. Is America Over?
7. Magna Carta, Its Fate, and Ours
8. The Week the World Stood Still
9. The Oslo Accords: Their Context, Their Consequences
10. The Eve of Destruction
11. Israel-Palestine: The Real Options
12. “Nothing for Other People”: Class War in the United States
13. Whose Security? How Washington Protects Itself and the Corporate Sector
14. Outrage
15. How Many Minutes to Midnight?
16. Cease-fires in Which Violations Never Cease
17. The U.S. Is a Leading Terrorist State
18. Obama’s Historic Move
19. “Two Ways About It”
20. One Day in the Life of a Reader of the New York Times
21. “The Iranian Threat”: Who Is the Gravest Danger to World Peace?
22. The Doomsday Clock
23. Masters of Mankind

Afterword to the 2017 Edition

Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Chomsky’s book is . . . a polemic designed to awaken Americans from complacency. America, in his view, must be reined in, and he makes the case with verve. . . . We should understand it as a plea to end American hypocrisy, to introduce a more consistently principled dimension to American relations with the world, and, instead of assuming American benevolence, to scrutinize critically how the US government actually exercises its still-unmatched power."—The New York Review of Books

"Chomsky is a global phenomenon. . . . He may be the most widely read American voice on foreign policy on the planet."—The New York Times Book Review

"With relentless logic, Chomsky bids us to listen closely to what our leaders tell us—and to discern what they are leaving out. . . . Agree with him or not, we lose out by not listening."—BusinessWeek

"How did we ever get to be an empire? The writings of Noam Chomsky—America's most useful citizen—are the best answer to that question."—The Boston Globe

"It is possible that, if the United States goes the way of nineteenth-century Britain, Chomsky's interpretation will be the standard among historians a hundred years from now."—The New Yorker

"For anyone wanting to find out more about the world we live in . . . there is one simple answer: read Noam Chomsky."—New Statesman

From the Publisher

03/28/2016
Equally depressing, thorough, and necessary, this new work from Chomsky (Because We Say So) shows why he is still among our most insightful public intellectuals. Here, he turns his attention to the U.S.’s current place on the world stage and how it got there. The author pulls no punches while dismantling the mainstream narrative about the Cuban Missile Crisis, American exceptionalism, the threat posed by Iran, and, through many lenses, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A key theme in this work is that the stories Americans tell about themselves are precisely that: stories. Received wisdom and mainstream history conveniently ignore the hard-to-swallow stories of U.S. support for dictators in the Middle East and Central and South America. Moreover, Chomsky observes, American maintenance of the status quo exacerbates climate change and perpetuates the threat of nuclear annihilation. This book is unwavering in its excoriation of U.S. policy, past and present. It supplies no easy answers to the questions it raises, which may very well be the point. Nevertheless, these questions must be posed, and Chomsky does so with contagious fervor. (May)

Publishers Weekly

2016-03-27
The dean of left-wing American public intellectuals surveys the current scene and despairs.Ever wonder what it must be like to read a single edition of the New York Times the way Chomsky (Emeritus, Linguistics and Philosophy/MIT; What Kind of Creatures Are We?, 2015, etc.) reads it? Perhaps the most intriguing chapter here devotes itself to just this exercise, and it usefully reveals his cast of mind. For Chomsky, the Times is a kind of house organ, valuable for many things but more useful as a guide to the conventional wisdom of those who rule: the United States, the G-7, the global trade organizations and financial institutions they control, multinational conglomerates, retail and media empires. As he considers the news of the day and the responsibility of privileged intellectuals, Chomsky positions himself not with his peers in service to the state but rather with those committed to a higher set of values, "the causes of freedom, justice, mercy, and peace." For decades, the author has written from this perspective—hardly a chapter passes without him citing a previous work of his own—and by now, both critics (infuriated) and admirers (charmed) are familiar with his analysis. Conversationally, with numerous historical references and his trademark mix of wit, sarcasm, invective, insight, and wrongheadedness, he identifies two principal threats, nuclear war and global warming, isolates for particular attention three geographic areas of widespread unrest and violence—Eastern Europe, East Asia, and the Islamic world—and drubs our rulers for dismissing public opinion, ignoring the powerless, and placing their own interests and security over the people's welfare. No surprise that the Republican Party and a string of its presidents come in for a pounding, but Chomsky has almost as harsh things to say about presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton, and Obama and their ministers, and liberal commentators like Paul Krugman. Chomsky continues to hope that demands for "independence, self-respect, and personal dignity" may reappear "when awakened by circumstances and militant activism," but he doesn't appear to be holding his breath.

Kirkus Reviews