America Besieged [Paperback]

Michael Parenti (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1998

America Besieged deals with the underlying forces within U.S. society that deeply affect our lives. Showing how we are being misled and harmed by those who profess to have our interests at heart, Michael Parenti writes: “We are indeed a nation besieged, not from without but from within, not subverted from below but from above; the moneyed power exercises a near monopoly influence over our political life, over the economy, the state, and the media. Some Americans are astonished to hear of it. Others have had their suspicions, although they may not be quite sure how it all adds up. This book invites the reader to stop blaming the powerless and poor and, in that good old American phrase, start ‘following the money.’ That is the first and most important step toward lifting the siege and bringing democracy back to life."

Michael Parenti, one of America’s most astute and entertaining political analysts, is the author of Against Empire, Dirty Truths, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism, Democracy for the Few, Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America, and many other books.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Originally presented as radio commentaries in 1996, these assaults on corporate venality, militarism and government indifference to the poor sometimes sound better read aloud than on paper; while heated sound bites are numerous, additional light might have been shed if the polemics were supplemented more frequently by data. Nonetheless, Parenti's (Democracy for the Few) voice is sharp and urgent, providing a short but comprehensive course in radical analysis. He ticks off what he feels are America's problems: a political culture all too ready to worship politicians rather than ask hard questions ("[I]t is the essence of democracy," he cautions, "that we not trust and not have faith in our leaders"); a fundamentally unjust economy in which "pollution, like sin, is regularly denounced but vigorously practiced"; a state shockingly willing to tolerate the murder of left-wing dissidents from other countries; and a narrow-minded, jingoistic mass media that serves as the handmaid of corporate power (why, he asks, did neo-Nazi--but pro-capitalist--David Duke's failed Senate bid receive so much more attention than Socialist Bernard Sanders's victory?). Rather more hyperbolically, he notes that the recent Olympics "felt more like Munich 1936 than Atlanta 1996." Opinionated and angry, but also reasonable and sincerely hopeful in the possibility of a better future through collective action, this is a book Joe Hill would have loved.

Copyright 1998 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Michael Parenti, PhD Yale, is an internationally known author and lecturer. He is one of the nation's leadiing progressive political analysts. He is the author of over 250 published articles and seventeen books. His writings are published in popular periodicals, scholarly journals, and his op-ed pieces have been in leading newspapers such as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. His informative and entertaining books and talks have reached a wide range of audiences in North America and abroad.

Product Details

• Paperback: 205 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Books (May 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872863387
• ISBN-13: 978-0872863385
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,316,490 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Parenti (Berkeley, CA) is the acclaimed author of more than twenty books, including, most recently, Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader; The Assassination of Julius Caesar; and The Culture Struggle. The New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, the New York Review of Books, Harper's, The Nation, and Antioch Review, are among the countless publications that have praised Parenti's work. For further information, visit his Web site: michaelparenti.org

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Valuable Book That Confirms..., June 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: America Besieged (Paperback)

what many already know or suspect about corporate capitalist control of our economy and therefore, to a great extent, our lives. I think it was George Orwell who once said: "The greatest threat to Democracy is the notion that we have already achieved it." This book (as well as Parenti's others) should blow away once and for all that false idea that we live under a system of government "of, by, and for the people". That quote should be amended to read: "of, by, and for the rich." American's suffer from mass delusions and illusions about capitalism and Marxism due to decades of indoctrination and propaganda, I think mainly through TV commercials that portray corporations as "friendly" entities "serving the public". And then there are the politicians, the executive committee of the ruling class. To my further dismay, Parenti and others like him, are often "preaching to the choir"; that the people who most need to hear him, the one's who rarely, if ever, question the conventional (corporate media) "wisdom", will not come in touch with this book. But it's one that deserves to be a national bestseller. Unfortunately, because it talks openly of the class system and class rule in America, it will not. Parenti says it all in a very compelling down-to-earth style.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Goes to the core, February 2, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: America Besieged (Paperback)

A reader can learn more about how the system works from this one book than from a standard four-year course in political science at a respectable university. I know I did. Not that my eyes were opened by Parenti's insights, good as they are. Most have been around for some time. What the author has done instead is present them in highly readable and accessible style that both illuminates and persuades. There is more floodlight wattage in Parenti's single bulb, than in the paid-for dimness of the professional journals of American political scientists combined.

From its DNA imperative to produce profits or die, to its spread through politics and culture, we see how capitalism as an organizing principle systematically dehumanizes people and devastates the land, while rule by its moneyed elite crouches behind a thin veil of democacy. This is not fantasy, folks. It's reality, and the next time you get ripped-off on the job, see an election rigged, or watch pristine countryside get eaten up, think about it. We don't have to act this way toward other people, other creatures, or ourselves. The commies may not have had the best solution, but like it or not, they understood the problem. As Parenti shows, that problem is now metastizing across the globe under a variety of ugly acronyms, GATT, IMF, NATO, and a host of other anti-democratic covers. If people can devise better tools, we can devise better ways of living together. Apathy is not an option.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent, February 17, 2002

By 

Communist (Capitalist America) - See all my reviews

This review is from: America Besieged (Paperback)

Great book!

Michael Parenti did it, a great well-organized book which step-by-step examines everything revolving around our life, from the media to the economy, to the politics, and relates it to how all these three strangleholds on society are manipulated and/or owned by capital and corporations. Parenti also confronts capitalism as an "system without a soul or humanity" which reduces every human activity to market profitablity. This book really does go to the core of America and emphasizes that democracy has not been achieved, that democracy is only for the rich and the owning class, from the two-party system where both parties are pro-corporation, which supresses left wing ideology by various ways in history, as well as tactics still being practiced today. Overall, this book is a summary of all the problems that are happening in the US that most of the rich do not know or want to admit are happening. I recomend this book as a vivid overview of the supressed problems in todays society to any open minded reader.