Noam Chomsky Reading List

Africa

• The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State by Basil Davidson
• Qaddafi and the United States Since 1969 by Edward P. Haley

Anarchism

• Anarchism by Daniel Guerin
• Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice by Rudolf Rocker
• Bakunin on Anarchy: Selected Works by the Activist-Founder of World Anarchism edited by Sam Dolgoff
  
• Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism by Peter H. Marshall
• Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
• Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution by Peter Kropotkin

Asia

• Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization by Alice Amsden
  
• Cambodia: 1975-1982 by Michael Vickery
  
• The Case of General Yamashita by A. Frank Reel
  
• Forty Days with the Enemy by Richard Dudman
  
• Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge, the United Nations and the International Community edited by Ben Kiernan
  
• Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization by Robert Wade
  
• Kampuchea: Decade of the Genocide edited by Kimmo Kiljunen
  
• The Origins of the Korean War Vol I. & II by Bruce Cumings
  
• The Pacific Alliance: United States Foreign Economic Policy and Japanese Trade Recovery, 1947-1955 by William Borden
• The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79 by Ben Kiernan
  
• Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia by William Shawcross
  
• Victor’s Justice: the Tokyo War Crimes Trial by Richard M. Minnear

Arms Control

• Politics and Force Levels: The Strategic Missile Program of the Kennedy Administration by Desmond Ball
• Wizards of Armageddon by Fred Kaplan

Central America

• The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power by Susanne Jonas
  
• Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer
  
• The Chronology: The Documented Day-by-Day Account of the Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Contras by Scott Armstrong et al.
  
• The C.I.A. in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention by Richard H. Immerman
• Coffee and Democracy in Modern Costa Rica by Anthony Winson
• Contra Terror in Nicaragua — Report of a Fact-finding Mission: September 1984-January 1985 by Reed Brody
  
• El Salvador: A Revolution Confronts the United States by Cynthia Arnson
  
• Export Agriculture and the Crisis in Central America by Robert Williams
  
• Grenada: An Eyewitness Account of the U.S. Invasion and the Caribbean History That Provoked It by Hugh O’Shaughnessy
  
• Grenada: Revolution in Reverse by James Ferguson
  
• The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era by Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane Hunter
• Mask of Democracy: Labor Suppression in Mexico Today by Dan La Botz
  
• Nicaragua: The First Five Years edited by Thomas Walker
• Nicaragua: The Threat of a Good Example? by Dianna Melrose
• Out of Control: The Story of the Reagan Administration’s Secret War in Nicaragua, The Illegal Arms Pipeline, and the Contra Drug Connection by Leslie Cockburn
  
• The Reagan Administration and Nicaragua: How Washington Constructs Its Case for Counterrevolution in Central America by Morris Morley and James Petras
  
• Reagan versus the Sandinistas: The Undeclared War on Nicaragua edited by Thomas Walker
  
• Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States by Piero Gleijeses
  
• Under the Eagle: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Caribbean by Jenny Pearce
• Trouble in our Backyard: Central America and the United States in the Eighties edited by Mark Diskin
• Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador by Raymond Bonner
• What Difference Could a Revolution Make?: Food and Farming in the New Nicaragua by Joseph Collins et al.
• Witness to Genocide: The Present Situation of Indians in Guatemala by Craig W. Nelson and Kenneth I. Taylor

Cold War

• America’s Secret War Against Bolshevism: U.S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1920 by David S. Fogelsang
  
• Beyond The Cold War: Conflict and Cooperation In the Third World edited by George W. Breslauer, Harry Kreisler and Benjamin Ward
  
• Corporations and the Cold War edited by David Horowitz
• Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan by Raymond L. Garthoff
  
• Hostile Acts: U.S. Policy in Costa Rica in the 1980s by Martha Honey
  
• Inside the League: The Shocking Exposé of How Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League by Scott Anderson and John Lee Anderson
  
• No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities by Ellen Schrecker
  
• A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War by Melvyn Leffler
• The Press and the Cold War by James Aronson
  
• Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis by Raymond L Garthoff
  
• Shootdown: Flight 007 and the American Connection by R.W. Johnson
  
• “The Target Is Destroyed”: What Really Happened to Flight 007 and What America Knew About It by Seymour M. Hersh
  
• The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism: Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics, and Internal Security, 1946-1948 by Richard M. Freeland
  
• Washington’s China: The National Security World, the Cold War, And the Origins of Globalism by James Peck

Cuba

• The Fish is Red: The Story of The Secret War Against Castro by Warren Hinckle and William Turner
• Imperial State and Revolution: The United States and Cuba, 1952-1986 by Morris H. Morley

Culture

• The Enchanted Glass: Britain and its Monarchy by Tom Nairn
• The Horrors of the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century America by G.J. Barker-Benfield
  
• Inventors of the Promised Land by Lawrence Friedman
• On Active Service in War and Peace: Politics and Ideology in the American Historical Profession by Jesse Lemisch
  
• The People’s Religion: American Faith in the 90’s by George Gallup Jr. and Jim Castelli

Domestic Policy

• Democracy and the Welfare State by edited by Amy Gutman
• The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure by Juliet B. Schor
• The Motorization of American Cities by David J. St. Clair
• The State of Working America (Annual)
• Take The Rich Off Welfare by Mark Zepezauer and Arthur Naiman

Drug Policy

• White-Out: The C.I.A., Drugs and the Press by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair

Economics

• The ABCs of Political Economy by Robert Hahnel
• Accumulation and Power: An Economic History of the United States by Richard B. DuBoff
  
• Bad Smaritans by Ha-Joon Chang
• Business Organization and the Myth of the Market Economy by William Lazonick
  
• Business as a System of Power by Robert A. Brady
• Capitalism and Its Economics: A Critical History by Douglas F. Dowd
• The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan
• Corporate Control, Corporate Power by Edward S. Herman
  
• The Economy of Death by Richard Barnet
  
• The Great Deficit Scares: The Federal Budget, Trade, and Social Security by Robert Eisner
• The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America 1815-1846 by Charles Sellers
• New Ways Of Knowing: The Sciences, Society, and Reconstructive Knowledge by Marcus G. Raskin and Herbert J. Bernstein
  
• Political Economy and Laissez-Faire: Economics and Ideology in the Ricardan Era by Rajani Kannepalli Kanth
  
• Wall Street: How It Works and for Whom by Doug Henwood
• The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

Education

• The American School, 1642-1985: Varieties of Historical Interpretation and the Foundations and Development of American Education by Joel Spring
  
• Education and the Rise of the Corporate State by Joel Spring
  
• The Irony of Early School Reform by Michael Katz
• Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis
• The Social Ideas of American Educators by Merle Curti

Environmentalism

• Global Spin: The Corporate Assault On Environmentalism by Sharon Beder
  
• The Heat Is On: The High Stakes Battle over Earth’s Threatened Climate by Ross Gelbspan

Ethics

• Moral Minds: The Nature of Right and Wrong by Marc D. Hauser
• No Contest: The Case Against Competition by Alfie Kohn

FBI

• The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America’s Political Intelligence System by Frank J. Donner
  
• Agents of Repression: The F.B.I.’s Secret Wars on the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement by Ward Churchill and James Vander Wall
  
• Break-ins, Death Threats, and the F.B.I.: The Covert War Against the Central America Movement by Ross Gelbspan
  
• COINTELPRO: The F.B.I.’s Secret War on Political Freedom by Nelson Blackstock
  
• The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the F.B.I.’s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall
  
• The Lawless State: The Crimes of U.S. Intelligence Agencies by Morton H. Halpern et al.
  
• Political Repression in Modern America, From 1870 to the Present by Robert J. Goldstein
  
• Spying On America: The F.B.I.’s Domestic Counterintelligence Program by James Kirkpatrick Davis
• War at Home: Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It by Brian Glick

Globalization/Development

• America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism by David F. Noble
  
• Bad Samaritans by Ha-Joon Chang
• Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective: A Book of Essays by Alexander Gerschenkron
  
• Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes by Paul Bairoch
  
• Economic Liberalism and Underdevelopment: Studies in the Disintegration of an Idea by Frederick Clairmonte
  
• Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation by David F. Noble
  
• Global Rift: The Third World Comes of Age by L.S. Stavrianos
  
• Hope and Folly: The United States and U.N.E.S.C.O., 1945-1985 by William Preston, Edward S. Herman, and Herbert I. Schiller
  
• The Irish Economy in a Comparative Institutional Perspective by Lars Mjøset
  
• The Logic of International Restructuring by Winfried Ruigrock and Rob Van Tulder
  
• Long-Term Factors in American Economic Growth edited by Stanley L. Engerman and Robert E. Gallman
  
• North American Trade As If Democracy Mattered: What’s Wrong with N.A.F.T.A. and What Are the Alternatives? by Ian Robinson
• Pathways From the Periphery: The Politics of Growth in the Newly Industrializing Countries by Stephen Haggard
• Targeting the Computer: Government Support and International Competition by Kenneth Flamm
• Who’s Bashing Whom?: Trade Conflict in High-Technology Industries by Laura D’Andrea Tyson

History

• The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism edited by Alfred Young
  
• The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control, 1917 to 1921 by Maurice Brinton
  
• Britain’s First Socialists: The Levellers, Agitators, and Diggers of the English Revolution by Fenner Brockway
  
• The End of Empire by John Strachey
  
• The Forging of the Union: 1781-1789 by Richard B. Morris
  
• The Great Irish Famine by Cormac ó Gráda
  
• The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest by Francis Jennings
  
• Ireland before and after the Famine: Explorations in economic history, 1800-1925  by Cormac ó Gráda
  
• The Loyalists in the American Revolution by Claude Halstead Van Tyne
  
• Main Currents in American History by Gabriel Kolko
  
• Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America by Thomas R. Hietala
  
• A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present by Howard Zinn
  
• Secret History of the American Revolution by Carl Van Doren
  
• The Unknown Revolution, 1917-1921 by Voline
  
• The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution by Christopher Hill

Israel/Palestine Conflict

• The Absence of Peace: Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Nicholas Guyatt
  
• Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question edited by Christopher Hitchens and Edward Said
  
• The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering by Norman G. Finkelstein
  
• Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict by Norman G. Finkelstein
• The Israeli Connection: Who Israel Arms and Why by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
• Israeli Foreign Policy: South Africa and Central America by Jane Hunter
• My Home, My Prison by Raymonda Hawa Tawil
  
• The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years by Norman G. Finkelstein
• The Third Way: A Journal of Life in the West Bank by Raja Shehadeh
  
• The West Bank Story by Rafik Halabi

Kurdistan

• After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? by Jonathan C. Randal

Labor

• The Fall of the House of Labor by David Montgomery
• The Industrial Worker: 1840-1860 by Norman Ware
• Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge by Michael L. Dertouzos, Richard K. Lester et al.
  
• Military Enterprise and Technological Change: Perspectives on the American Experience edited by Merrit Roe Smith
• Profits Without Production by Seymour Melman
• Progress Without People: In Defense of Luddism by David F. Noble
• Strike! by Jeremy Brecher

Latin America

• Bordering on Trouble: Resources and Politics in Latin America edited by Andrew Maguire and Janet W. Brown
• Brazil and the Quiet Intervention by Phylis Parker
  
• The Containment of Latin America: A history of the myths and realities of the Good Neighbor Policy by David Green
  
• Exporting Democracy: The United States and Latin America edited by Abraham F. Lowenthal
  
• Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America by Lars Schoultz
• The Lessons of Chile: The Chilean Coup and the Future of Socialism edited by John Gittings
  
• The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964-85 by Thomas Skidmore
  
• Requiem for Revolution: The United States and Brazil, 1961-1969 by Ruth Leacock
  
• The United States and Chile: Imperialism and the Overthrow of the Allende Government by James Petras and Morris Morley
  
• United States Penetration of Brazil by Jan Knippers Black

Legal

• The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir by Telford Taylor
• A Worthy Tradition: Freedom of Speech in America by Harry Kalven Jr.
• Former Secrets: Government Records Made Public Through the Freedom of Information Act by Evan Hendricks
  
• Freedom Under Fire: U.S. Civil Liberties in Times of War by Michael Linfield
• The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique edited by David Kairys
• The Transformation of American Law, Vol I. & II by Morton Horwitz

Media/Propaganda

• Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
  
• Beyond Hypocrisy: Decoding the News in an Age of Propaganda by Edward S. Herman
  
• The British Press: a Manifesto edited by James Curran
  
• Communicating Politics: Mass communications and the political process edited by Peter Golding, Graham Murdock, and Philip Schlesinger
  
• The Daily Newspaper in America: The Evolution of a Social Instrument by Alfred McClung Lee
  
• Deadline for the Media: Today’s Challenges to Press, T.V. and Radio by James Aronson
  
• Emergence of a Free Press by Leonard W. Levy
  
• Fooling America: How Washington Insiders Twist the Truth and Manufacture the Conventional Wisdom by Robert Parry
  
• The Geopolitics of Information: How Western Culture Dominates the World by Anthony Smith
  
• Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media by Michael Parenti
  
• The International News Services by Jonathan Fenby
• Jefferson and Civil Liberties: the Darker Side by Leonard W. Levy
• Manipulating Public Opinion: Essays on Public Opinion as a Dependent Variable edited by Michael Margolis and Gary A. Mauser
  
• The Media Monopoly by Ben H. Bagdikian
  
• Power Without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain by James Curran and Jean Seaton
  
• PR! A Social History of Spin by Stuart Ewen
  
• The Press and the Cold War by James Aronson
  
• Propaganda by Edward L. Bernays
• Public Relations by Edward L. Bernays
• The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans’ Policy Preferences by Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro
  
• Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism 1945-1960 by Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf
• The Sponsor: Notes on a Modern Potentate by Erik Barnouw
  
• Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman
  
• Toxic Sludge Is Good For You!: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry by John C. Stauber and Sheldon Rampton
• Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media by Martin A. Lee and Norman Soloman

Middle East

• Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran by Kermit Roosevelt
  
• The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations by Bill A. James
  
• Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali by Afaf Lutfi Al-Sayyid Marsot
  
• The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf by Ramsey Clark
  
• The Iranian Triangle: The Untold Story of Israel’s Role in the Iran-Contra Affair by Samuel Segev
• The U.S. Press and Iran: Foreign Policy and the Journalism of Deference by William A. Dorman and Mansour Farhang

Philosophy

• A Discourse on the Origins of Inequality by Jean-Jacques Rousseau 
• Herodotus: A New and Literal Version
• Limits of State Action by Wilhelm von Humboldt
• Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth, and Dissolution by Leszek Kolakowski

Terrorism

• The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda by Edward S. Herman
• Terrorism and the State: A Critique of Domination Through Fear by William D. Perdue
• The “Terrorism” Industry: The Experts and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror by Edward S. Herman and Gerry O’Sullivan
• Western State Terrorism edited by Alexander George

Turkey

• After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? by Jonathan C. Randal

US Foreign Policy

• The American Occupation of Japan: The Origins of the Cold War in Asia by Michael Schaller
• Confronting the Third World: United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1980 by Gabriel Kolko
  
• Demonstration Elections: U.S.-Staged Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador by Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead
  
• Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World by Jonathan Kwitney
  
• Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation by Frank Kofsky
  
• Hidden Terrors by A.J. Langguth
  
• Human rights fifty years on: A reappraisal edited by Tony Evans
  
• In Search of Enemies: A C.I.A. Story by John Stockwell
• Inequity and Intervention: The Federal Budget and Central America by Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers
  
• Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America by Walter LaFeber
• The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era by Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane Hunter
  
• Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II by William Blum
• Reagan and the World: Imperial Policy in the New Cold War by Jeff McMahan
• Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia by Audrey R. and George McT. Kahin
• Thank God They’re On Our Side: The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships by David F. Schmitz
  
• Under the Eagle: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Caribbean by Jenny Pearce
• War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War by John W. Dower

US Politics

• Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics by Paul Street
• Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems by Thoms Ferguson
• The Hidden Election edited by Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers
• On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency by Mark Hertsgaard
• On Democracy: Toward a Transformation of American Society by Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers
• Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics by Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers
• Rules of the Game: American Politics and the Central America Movement by Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers
  
• There He Goes Again: Ronald Reagan’s Reign of Error by Mark Green and Gail MacColl
• The Triumph of Politics: How the Reagan Revolution Failed by David A. Stockman
• Uneasy Partners: Big Business in American Politics, 1945-1990 by Kim McQuaid
• Washington Babylon by Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silverstein

Vietnam

• Abuse of Power by Theodore Draper
  
• Against the Crime of Silence: Proceedings of the Russell International War Crimes Tribunal edited by John Duffett
  
• Atrocities in Vietnam: Myths and Realities by Edward S. Herman
  
• Brother Enemy: The War after the War; A History of Indochina Since the Fall of Saigon by Nayan Chanda
  
• Cover-up: The Army’s Secret Investigation of the Massacre at My Lai 4 by Seymour M. Hersh
  
• Harvest of Death: Chemical Warfare In Vietnam and Cambodia by J.B. Neiland et al
  
• Intervention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam by George Kahin
  
• Kennedy’s Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963 edited by Thomas Paterson
  
• The Lost Crusade: America in Vietnam by Chester Cooper
  
• The Military Half: An Account of Destruction in Quang Ngai and Quang Tin by Jonathan Schell
  
• Nuremberg and Vietnam: an American Tragedy by Telford Taylor
  
• The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam, Senator Gravel Edition
• The Phoenix Program by Douglas Valentine
  
• Soldiers in Revolt: The American Military Today by David Cortright
• War Crimes in Vietnam by Bertrand Russell