Noam Chomsky

Author

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historical essayist, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science.

Noam Chomsky's 121 Book Recommendations

• Ruthless Criticism
• Instruments of Statecraft
• Washington's War on Nicaragua
• Worlds in Collision
• Web of Deceit
• The Uses of Haiti
• Voices of a People's History of the United States
• The Wealth of Nations
• The Uncensored War
• The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940
• The Spanish Cockpit
• The Transformation of American Law, 1870-1960
• The Road to Opec
• The United States and the Origins of the Cuban Revolution
• The Record of the Paper
• The Real Terror Network
• The Quality of Mercy
• The Price of Power
• The New Intifada
• The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade
• The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-1951
• The Marshall Plan
• The Limits of State Action
• The Long Peace
• The Origins of the Korean War
• The Kennedy Tapes
• The Great Transformation
• The Discovery of India
• The CIA and American Democracy
• The Age Of Terror
• The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials
• The American Occupation of Japan
• Reagan Versus The Sandinistas
• Requiem for Revolution
• Taking the Risk Out of Democracy
• Qaddafi and the United States Since 1969
• Selling Free Enterprise
• Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis
• Supremacy and Oil
• Power Without Responsibility
• Panic Rules!
• No Gods, No Masters
• Politicide
• Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire
• Last Reflections on a War
• Kennedy's Quest for Victory
• A Peace Denied
• John Quincy Adams and American Global Empire
• Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956
• Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
• Inevitable Revolutions
• Expulsion of the Palestinians
• Exporting Democracy
• Empire of Fortune
• East Timor
• Human Rights and United States Policy Toward Latin America
• Business As a System of Power
• Danger and Survival
• Cambodia, 1975-1982
• Culture, Inc
• Conflicting Missions
• Collusion Across the Jordan
• Confronting the Third World
• Condemned To Repetition
• Arguing About War
• Accumulation and Power: Economic History of the United States
• Bitter Fruit
• A Preponderance of Power
• Anarcho-Syndicalism
• After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?
• A Thousand Days
• Between Serb and Albanian
• Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship: “an important and informative study”
• The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925: “a very good book by one of the best labor historians”
• Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement: “Ward Churchill's excellent book Agents of Repression”
• The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism: “a very good book on this by Edward Herman and Robert McChesney called Global Media”
• Homage to Catalonia: “Orwell's great book, in my opinion, his greatest book, Homage to Catalonia”
• Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy: “There's only one good book about this... It's a book well worth reading.”
• Tribes with Flags: Adventure and Kidnap in Greater Syria: “Charles Glass's excellent book Tribes with Flags”
• How America Gets Away with Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity: “a very important book on the topic by Canadian international lawyer Michael Mandel”
• The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence: “an excellent book... the best study by far of British intelligence”
• Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History: “Norman Finkelstein's quite outstanding book”
• Hope and Folly: The United States and UNESCO, 1945-1985: “There's a very good book about this... It's worth reading: Hope and Folly”
• Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism: “I've just finished a few important books. One is Ha-Joon Chang's Bad Samaritans, a penetrating and expert study”
• Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment: “Hallward's deeply informed account”
• Washington's China: The National Security World, the Cold War, and the Origins of Globalism: “there's a wonderful book on it that came out a couple of years ago by James Peck, a Sinologist, called Washington's China. It's the first scholarly book to go through the whole National Security culture.”
• Global Finance at Risk: The Case for International Regulation: “about 10 years ago there was an important book called Global Finance at Risk”
• Mathematics for the Million: How to Master the Magic of Numbers: “really good books worth reading today like Mathematics for the Millions”
• Truth, Torture, and the American Way: The History and Consequences of U.S. Involvement in Torture: “There is no hyperbole when Jennifer Harbury entitles her penetrating study of the U.S. torture record Truth, Torture, and the American Way.”
• Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II: “a very important study by Wall Street Journal bureau chief Douglas Blackmon”
• ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism: “Yves Smith's book – which is really good ... It's a great book.”
• Eyes in Gaza: “Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse, in their remarkable book Eyes in Gaza”
• Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-opted Human Rights: “In his penetrating study "Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-Opted Human Rights," international affairs scholar James Peck observes”
• The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations: “the most important scholarly study of the coup, Ervand Abrahamian's highly revealing work”
• Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State: “a very important book by a historian, very good historian, Al McCoy”
• The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters: “a very good book on it by a well-known sociologist, Benjamin Ginsberg”
• No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes: “journalist Anand Gopal explains the reasons in his remarkable book, No Good Men Among the Living”
• The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia: “an important book by Nick Cullather”
• Voices from the Plain of Jars: Life under an Air War: “the late Fred Branfman's remarkable book Voices from the Plain of Jars”
• Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village: “William Hinton's remarkable study Fanshen captures vividly”
• Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom: “there's a marvelous book that just came out, incidentally. Norman Finkelstein's book Gaza, which is about Gaza's martyrdom, is a definitive study of this.”
• The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner: “I recently read The Doomsday Machine by Daniel Ellsberg. I found it riveting. It's a very important book.”
• A History of America in Ten Strikes: “there's a very good book on this, incidentally, by Erik Loomis”
• The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution: “an excellent book, incidentally, very good reading”
• Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II: “Madhusree Mukerjee's excellent book”
• The Green New Deal and Beyond: Ending the Climate Emergency While We Still Can: “Moving to zero net carbon emissions, and fast, is the point of Stan Cox's important new study, The Green New Deal and Beyond.”
• A Different Kind of War: The UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq: “extremely illuminating book... arguably the most important book”
• Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire: “Caroline Elkins has a very important book [Legacy of Violence] just out”
• American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis: “penetrating study American Midnight”
• The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism: “One very impressive recent study, by Clara Mattei, argues persuasively”
• Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia: “a very important scholarly work... Carolyn Eisenberg's extensive, detailed study”
• The Egyptians: A Radical History of Egypt's Unfinished Revolution: “I would recommend a book that just came out on Egypt by Jack Shenker”
• The Rise and Fall of American Growth: “his very important study on the rise and fall of American growth”
• Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation: “for a valuable recent study of the origins of the system, see Frank Kofsky”
• The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture: “a very good study on the origins of the gun culture”
• Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation: “one important careful study... David Noble... His major work was on the machine tool industry”
• Inequality Kills Us All: COVID-19's Health Lessons for the World: “an important study by Steven Bezruchka”
• Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United: “Zephyr Teachout writes in a valuable study”
• Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal: “Cordovez and Harrison put it in their definitive study of how the UN managed to arrange for”
• The New Zealand Experiment: A World Model for Structural Adjustment?: “Jane Kelsey's illuminating study of "the New Zealand Experiment"”
• Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam: “the very important book by British journalist Jason Burke”

Books written by Noam Chomsky

• Aspects of the Theory of Syntax
• Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance
• Who Rules the World?
• Language and Mind
• Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought
• Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power
• Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy
• Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
• 9-11
• Deterring Democracy
• Year 501: The Conquest Continues
• Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians
• The Minimalist Program
• Why Only Us: Language and Evolution
• What Kind of Creatures Are We?
• Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet
• The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World
• On Palestine
• Syntactic Structures
• Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order
• On Anarchism
• Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky
• American Power and the New Mandarins
• Optimism Over Despair: On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change
• Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use
• The Sound Pattern of English
• How the World Works
• The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism
• Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs
• Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance
• The Culture of Terrorism
• Necessary Illusions
• Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media