Introducing Chomsky, 2nd Edition

Rating:
Summary: Useless as an Introduction
Review: As a avid reader of books on evolutionary psychology and sociobiology, and a foreign language graduate, I thought I would be able to cope with the degree of difficulty of this "Introduction". In fact, I gave up trying one third into the book. Not only are the technical terms not defined, but any attempt to derive their meaning or establish relationships between concepts failed.Much of the argument is enigmatic rather than explanatory. Many utterances seem to be drawn out of context.

At least as an introduction to a difficult subject, there's nothing for it but to regard this book as a failure.

Rating:
Summary: Title Of Review
Review: I bought this book at the book store which didn't have any of Chomskys political books (I wonder why). All there was was this one which had some of Chomskys ideas. The majority of the content in this book is about linguistics. To tell the truth, I didn't really know what linguistics was until I got this book. I agree with the other reviewer who said that this book didn't explain all the technical terms too well, or at all. I finished this book with hardly anything learned about linguistics. The Social Critic section didn't define too many terms either, but I already knew most of it so it was ok. Next time I'll buy a real Chomsky book because I like his essays that I find online, but this book wasn't so great, but then again, it also wasn't written by him.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting social part but liguistics part too complicated
Review: Introducing Chomsky is divided into two sections:

a) First 122 pages: concerned with his theories of linguistics. Utterly fails to make it understandable for begginers. I found myself drowning in a subject I didn't particularly want to read about anyway (I bought this for the second section, which is:)

b) Last 70 or so pages: concerned with Chomsky's social critique. Extremely interesting, worthwhile read and a good introduction for begginers. Even this opens our eyes to a lot of truths and should push any reader who can get past the dreary linguistics section on to Chomsky's own works on government, propaganda and politics.