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The Myth of American Idealism

The Myth of American Idealism

How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

From one of the world’s most prominent thinkers comes an urgent warning of the threat that US power poses to humanity’s future

The land of the free. The home of the brave. But what has America achieved in the aim of ‘spreading democracy’ — except wreak havoc across the globe and establish a reckless foreign policy that serves the interest of few and has endangered all too many?

In this timely book, Noam Chomsky writing with Nathan J. Robinson, vividly traces America’s pursuit of global domination, offering an incisive critique of the self-serving myths that dominant elites in the United States continue to push.

Offering penetrating accounts of Washington’s role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they examine how interventions such as these have been justified with noble stories about humanitarian missions and benevolent intentions but are now driving us closer to wars with Russia and China.

At once thorough and devastating, urgent and provocative, The Myth of American Idealism offers a highly readable entry to the conclusions Noam Chomsky has come to after a lifetime of thought and activism.

'One of the greatest, most radical public thinkers of our time. When the sun sets on the American empire, as it will, as it must, Noam Chomsky's work will survive' Arundhati Roy

'The west's most prominent critic of US imperialism . . . the closest thing in the English-speaking world to an intellectual superstar' Guardian

© Nathan J. Robinson and Noam Chomsky 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2024

About the authors

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky is institute professor emeritus in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and lau­reate professor in the Agnes Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona. His work is widely credited with having revolutionized the field of modern linguistics, and he is equally renowned for his incisive writings on global affairs and U.S. foreign policy. The single most cited and published living author, winner of numer­ous international awards, Chomsky has written over one hundred books, including the bestselling political works Hegemony or Survival, Failed States, and Who Rules the World?.
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Nathan J. Robinson

Nathan J. Robinson is the cofounder and editor in chief of Current Affairs magazine. He is the author of Why You Should Be a Socialist and Responding to the Right, and his articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Republic, among others. Robinson holds a JD from Yale Law School and a PhD in sociology and social policy from Harvard University.
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