Rating: 
Summary: Most comprehensive book yet on Chomsky's political thought
Review: Many people are eager for a true alternative to the usual gang of talking heads (or shouting heads), pundits, etc, for commentary and analysis of political and social life. Noam Chomsky continues to offer such an alternative. However, people often find Chomsky's several dozen books on international affairs difficult to read; books of interviews with Chomsky tend to be much more popular than his own writings. The reason is simple: in the informal setting of an interview or the (often lengthy) question and answer periods that follow his talks Chomsky retains his remarkable ability to bring many topics together into a coherent response. He does this by drawing upon the same wealth of source material cited in his books, but the answers given in the casual setting flesh out Chomsky's keen sense of humor, his dedication to social justice and make for easier and even more interesting reading.Carlos Otero realized this, about 15 years ago, and published "Language and Politics," an excellent book flawed only by the lack of an index or footnotes. Mitchell and Schoeffel, with "Understanding Power," have improved on Otero's book by providing an index and the much-requested and -needed footnotes. Everything in "Understanding Power" is well documented. So well documented that the notes are longer than the book itself! To handle this the editors have set up a web site especially for this book, where notes may be down-loaded (or read on-line) in either HTML or PDF format. This book, almost all of which is in print for the first time, is at once a very accessible introduction to Chomsky's political thought as well as an excellent addition to the library of the most serious Chomsky critic or enthusiast.
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Summary: A very aptly titled book
Review: This book is aptly titled. It is, indeed, indispensable as a guide to Noam Chomsky's prolific work as an activist writer/speaker, spanning four decades and innumerable topics. Chomsky is often at his best in talks, Q & A sessions and impromptu answers to interviewers. This is how one should like to be introduced to Chomsky's vast political work. But previous books of interviews, however laudable for their readability, are equally damnable for the absence of references. Where did Chomsky read that comment by such-and-such an official? How do I know he's not making it up? Such questions occur rightly to most people upon their first encounter with someone presenting a view of the social world as unorthodox as Chomsky's. And the interview format provides no answers. The editors of this volume have found an ingenious solution. They have produced a Chomsky reader that is quite unlike a reader -- it consists mostly of transcribed exchanges with audiences at teach-ins and seminar-type discussions -- yet offers notes and references as extensive as -- indeed, more extensive than -- any of the books Chomsky himself has written. Chomsky has spoken of the need for "primers in intellectual self-defense". This book, I think, could serve that purpose very well.
Rating: 
Summary: Brave Intellect
Review: If I were judging this book on bravery, accessability and scope, it would get an easy 5 stars. I liked the edited-interviews format very much.
Many things he says are dead-on accurate and represent the best of free speech, particularly in how he dissects the motivations of the power brokers. Having said that, I think he's more a polemicist and dilettante than a serious intellect. He leaves out all kinds of facts and counterweights and seems to have a superficial understanding of many issues, e.g. he mischaracterized the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaving out Soviet fears that Kennedy was not in control of his Army and incorrectly claims that Cubans, rather than Russian generals, were in control of mobile-launched nukes in Cuba.
...but at least he's out there speaking his mind. A rare quality these days.
Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: This book is an excellent way to learn about the world. Chomsky is very accessible in interviews, and he still slings out loads of facts and information. This is a must read.
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Summary: Should be required reading for high school students
Review: Few other books could offer such an accessible and wide-ranging critique of US foreign policy and corporate capitalism. The interview format allows for an ease of reading often lacking in other texts with similar themes. In particular, the idea of placing the book's 500 pages or so of footnotes on the Web (rather than in the book) provides a factual basis to Chomsky's arguments without rendering the book an impossibly heavy tome.
Despite my overall admiration of the book, I have a couple of minor objections. First, Chomsky continually attacks or dismisses European 'intellectuals' (like Althusser, Derrida, Marx etc) but could probably benefit from engaging with their works at some level. Writers like Foucault have demonstrated eloquently how power and control are exerted not merely by corporations and governments, but by science, education, and mental health, topics that Chomksy largely does not address in this book. Also, like all too many social scientists, Chomsky seems to suffer from a degree of 'physics envy', whereby he sees physics as the 'ideal' model of science, and argues that political analysis (and other disciplines) should look to physics for methodology when attempting to present their 'proofs'. This notion is patently false, and whilst Chomsky is correct in asserting that much theorising that occurs from non-empirical standpoints (such as that done by European intellectuals) is utter claptrap, he runs the risk of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and pre-emptively dismissing potentially valuable ideas, such as those regarding ideology, for example.
Nonetheless, these are relatively minor quibbles in what is an otherwise outstanding introduction to a critical perspective on US gorvernment, corporations, and media. That Chomsky continually refers his arguments to concrete facts makes this book's political agenda particularly potent: one can disagree with Chomsky's arguments, but one cannot disagree with the death tolls for Haiti, or for the destruction of unions in America. Even the most thoroughly indoctrinated capitalist apologist would be hard-pressed to refute his or her way out of the facts and arguments contained in this book.
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Summary: A book you can read over and over
Review: Noam Chomsky is an amazing author. He picks away the dogma and doctines that Americans view the world through and offers a startling new way to look at the world. It's a world controlled by the elites. At first his ideas are real to believe, then he might be a little right, and then he's dead on. His analysis is coherent, well documented, and extremely intriguing. In Understanding Power he touches on foreign policy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the ideological control and propaganda, intellectualism, popular dissent, communism, economics, welfare, and utopia. The breadth of this book and his knowledge is startling. This is not a book to read to learn about a particular topic, but to learn a new way to see the world.
His underlying goal and message in his writings is to teach this. To question for yourself what you read and hear.
This is a great book for students to read who are studying American History or Political Science. I frequently mentioned this book in papers I've written at school.
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Summary: The Most Important Intellectual of Our Time
Review: It is a shame that Chomskey is not more widely known and read among non-intellectuals. One need not be an intellectual or deep into national or world politics to immediately grasp the fact that for the past 50 years, our foreign policy has led this nation into one bloody disaster after another. After reading this book, you will understand why a nation that bills itself as a "peace loving nation" finds itself embroiled in what has now become a continual state of war.
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Summary: First exposure to Chomsky - will inspire critical thought
Review: This is the first work of any form of I've ever read of Chomsky and I picked it up as an afterthought. I was more than pleasantly surprised. He has some very interesting and, more importantly, very unique ideas on a variety of social and political issues. He is incredibly smart and doesn't engage in the pure logical fallacies or rantings that many in this genre do. While I don't agree with a number of his ideas, they are challenging and require critical thought if you wish to dismiss them. As a simplified example, he raises the point that it is a complete fallacy to retrospectively judge 20th-century socialism as a failure simply by comparing the status of past and present communist countries with capitalist ones. At the turn of the century, Russia and most of Eastern Europe were extremely backwards in comparison to the West. He posits that Russia was closer in economic and social development to Brazil than the U.S., and has similar population and natural resources, etc. to Brazil. Brazil has been under the sphere of U.S. influence the last century, but compare Russia and Brazil today and you cannot roundly say the Russian system failed. i.e., look at how much technological and scientific and industrial progress Russia made in the twentienth centurya and take a look at Brazil today. Similarly, it is not proper to compare Eastern European nations to France or England; rather find countries that were comparable in their development when communism was instituted and compare those nations. If you compare U.S. satellite nations, i.e. nearly all of Latin America, to Soviet satellite nations, today who can really say that Nicaragua or Venezuela is better off than Bulgaria or Hungary?
This is just one example of an idea that merits consideration and requires you to formulate your own reasons why you may disagree, rather than just denouncing him. The only reason I would not give the book five stars is that the town-hall style presentation of the material is distracting and times and makes some chapters a bit rambling.
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Summary: perfect book for chomsky beginners
Review: This here is the perfect book for those who have yet to read chomsky's in depth work, or those who simply find Chomsky's ideas very interesting, yet find his work tedious. This book consists of nearly every political subject thinkable. He talks abour foriegn policy in the middle east, latin america, what was done in europe after ww2. He speaks of anarchism, socialism, marxism, and leninism. He speaks on the media, and "free trade". He discusses everything of political relevance. If you don't care for reading his other work because you find it too mind boggling or tedious, then i suggest this. Its all interviews, and its real straightforward.
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