NEW YORK—David Barsamian’s compelling new set of interviews with Noam Chomsky, Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy, is due to be released next week and is now available for preorder.
The cover of Global Discontents (Photo: Metropolitan Books)
In wide-ranging interviews with Barsamian, his longtime interlocutor, Noam Chomsky asks us to consider “the world we are leaving to our grandchildren”—one imperiled by the escalation of climate change and the growing threat of nuclear war. If the current system is incapable of dealing with these crises, he argues, it’s up to us to radically change it.
These 10 interviews examine the latest developments around the globe: the devastation of Syria, the reach of state surveillance, growing anger over economic inequality, the place of religion in American political culture, and the bitterly contested 2016 U.S. presidential election.
In accompanying personal reflections, Chomsky describes his own intellectual journey and the development of his uncompromising stance as America’s premier dissident intellectual.
One of America’s most tireless and wide-ranging investigative journalists, Barsamian has altered the independent media landscape. His weekly radio program Alternative Radio is now in its 32nd season. His books with Noam Chomsky, Eqbal Ahmad, Howard Zinn, Tariq Ali, Richard Wolff, Arundhati Roy, and Edward Said sell around the world. He lectures on world affairs, imperialism, capitalism, propaganda, the media, the economic crisis, and global rebellions.
In 2017, the South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award. He has collaborated with the world-renowned Kronos Quartet in events in New York, London, Vienna, Boulder, and elsewhere. Barsamian is the winner of the Media Education Award, the ACLU’s Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism, and the Cultural Freedom Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. The Institute for Alternative Journalism named him one of its Top Ten Media Heroes.
Noam Chomsky, by any measure, has led a most extraordinary life. In one index he is ranked as the eighth most-cited person in history, right up there with Aristotle, Shakespeare, Marx, Plato, and Freud. The legendary MIT professor practically invented modern linguistics. In addition to his pioneering work in that field he has been a leading voice for peace and social justice for many decades. Chris Hedges says he is “America’s greatest intellectual,” who “makes the powerful, as well as their liberal apologists, deeply uncomfortable.” He is Institute Professor (emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT and Laureate Professor of Linguistics and Haury Chair in the Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona.
At 89, he still gives lectures all over the world. He is the author of scores of books, including Global Discontents, Propaganda and the Public Mind, How the World Works, and Power Systems with David Barsamian.
The post New Book: The Chomsky, Barsamian Conversation Continues with ‘Global Discontents’ appeared first on The Armenian Weekly.
Source: Armenian Weekly
Link: New Book: The Chomsky, Barsamian Conversation Continues with ‘Global Discontents’