Customer Reviews

Language and Politics

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This collection is an impressive gathering of interviews collected from the early sixties to the present. In it, the Professor gives some of his best long-range insights on a number of topics, such as linguistics, philosophy, science, politics, the Middle East, the media, and education. This volume is not the place to start if you are new to Chomsky's work, but it is an excellent supplement to his famous writings. As to the interviews themselves, they are mostly fascinating, Chomsky proves once again that he may be the most important intellectual of the latter half of the 20th century. My one complaint is that some of the interviews overlap, as he is asked to speak multiple times on a number of topics, he is asked what the conncection between his linguistic work and his political work is about twenty times for instance, as the title would suggest. Aside from that, this is an invaluable read.

This is my favorite Chomsky book. Starting in the mid-80s, I found his writing to be less and less readable, but his talks and interviews more and more fascinating. This is a collection of those interviews, and it's really tremendous. Yes, there is some repetition and overlap, but on the whole it's very informative about the thinking of one the greatest men of our times.