Hopes & prospects

In this urgent new book, Noam Chomsky surveys the dangers and prospects of our early twenty-first century. Exploring challenges such as the growing gap between North and South, Americanexceptionalism (including under President Barack Obama), the fiascos of Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S.-Israeli assault on Gaza, and the recent financial bailouts, he also sees hope for the future and a way to moveforward-in the democratic wave in Latin America and in the global solidarity movements that suggest “real progress toward freedom and justice.”

Hopes and Prospects is essential reading for anyonewho is concerned about the primary challenges still facing the human race.

“This selection of Chomsky’s essays and lectures comes divided into geographical areas, but the issues are global inscope and import. In dissecting the rhetoric and logic of American empire and class domination, at home and abroad, Chomsky continues a longstanding and crucial work of elucidation and activism. Hislatest updates elaborate upon his signature themes — the double standards applied by the centers of U.S. power, including the mainstream media and intellectual culture, and the pervasive disconnect betweenAmerican policies and public opinion in what Chomsky dubs a dysfunctional democracy. But this book flags another major interest of Chomsky’s, signaled in the title: global avenues of resistance, inparticular the democratic and independent course being forged across Latin America (where several of these lectures were originally delivered). There are significant redundancies and polemicalflourishes, but the writing remains unswervingly rational and principled throughout, and lends bracing impetus to the real alternatives before us.”—Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)

“Noam Chomsky is aglobal phenomenon ... he may be the most widely read American voice on foreign policy on the planet today.”—New York Times Book Review

“In Hopes and Prospects, Noam Chomsky's gritty, politically...