It is always instructive to read American's premier dissident thinker if only simply to get an alternative take on what constitutes our present day "common sense"--an urgent project he undertakes in 9-11. Chomsky, whose recent hugely prolific political output has made him something of an icon of the American left, began his career as a ground-breaking theoretical linguist. And it is his attention to detail and language which continue to make him such a useful guide through the murky world of power politics and particularly to US Foreign Policy in the Middle East. In grappling with 9-11, a date which has become a noun whose very definition has been consciously moulded by the media and the American establishment, Chomsky is taking on one of the biggest challenges of our time. But this is a very slight book in which to do this. A collection of interviews conducted in the month following the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center Chomsky is here keen to stress the urgency of a response to 9-11 that is not simply reactionary warfaring. It behoves us to discover why 9-11 really happened. In the words of the title of another very useful book: Why Do People Hate America?. In such a small, and sometimes rather repetitive, volume Chomsky can only really encourage us to ask better questions and to seek more carefully and widely for better answers. But if questions are beginning to form then readers could do worse than look to this useful and provocative book. --Mark Thwaite
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