Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power

Noam Chomsky

Mar 2017 · Recorded Books · Narrated by Donald Corren

About this audiobook

NOAM CHOMSKY is widely regarded as the most influential thinker of our time, but never before has he devoted a major book to one topic, income inequality: "During the Great Depression, things were much worse than they are today, but there was an expectation that things were going to get better. There was a real sense of hopefulness. There isn't today.. Inequality is really unprecedented. In terms of total inequality, it's like the worst periods in American history. But if you refine it more closely, the inequality comes from the extreme wealth in a tiny sector of the population, a fraction of 1 percent.. Not only is it extremely unjust in itself, inequality has highly negative consequences on the society as a whole because the very fact of inequality has a corrosive, harmful effect on democracy." -NOAM CHOMSKY, in Requiem for the American Dream Requiem for the American Dream is not an essay collection but an entire work of some 70,000 words based on four years of interviews with Chomsky by the editors. Chomsky considers these to be his final, long-form documentary interviews. It is a book that makes Chomsky's breadth and depth accessible, and at the same gives us his most powerful political ideas with unprecedented, breathtaking directness. It will go down as one of his greatest and most lasting contributions. Requiem for the American Dream is being produced in tandem with the film of the same name that was recently released in selected theaters to rave reviews and standing ovations and will be on Netflix and touring colleges prior to the book's release.

About the author

Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on December 7, 1928. Son of a Russian emigrant who was a Hebrew scholar, Chomsky was exposed at a young age to the study of language and principles of grammar. During the 1940s, he began developing socialist political leanings through his encounters with the New York Jewish intellectual community. Chomsky received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy. He conducted much of his research at Harvard University. In 1955, he began teaching at MIT, eventually holding the Ferrari P. Ward Chair of Modern Language and Linguistics. Today Chomsky is highly regarded as both one of America's most prominent linguists and most notorious social critics and political activists. His academic reputation began with the publication of Syntactic Structures in 1957. Within a decade, he became known as an outspoken intellectual opponent of the Vietnam War. Chomsky has written many books on the links between language, human creativity, and intelligence, including Language and Mind (1967) and Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use (1985). He also has written dozens of political analyses, including Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), Chronicles of Dissent (1992), and The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many (1993).