Books by CSN Advisory Council Members

Medea Benjamin

Seven Locks Press, 1989

"Bridging the Global Gap" is the first major work on the growing internationalist movement that is focusing national attention on the interdependence of nations and on the connections between local and international struggles.

Noam Chomsky

Common Courage Press, 1999.

"Scarcely had the dust settled on NATO's 1999 bombing of Serbia when prolific political commentator Noam Chomsky brought out The New Military Humanism, which raises incisive, unsettling questions about the motives of the United States and England--the two most vocal proponents of Operation Allied Forces--and the efficacy of their handiwork. Chomsky pulls together much damning evidence, including testimony from the military commander who led the attack, to demonstrate that the assault was not intended to bring an end to Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic's "ethnic cleansing" of the disputed territory in Kosovo; it seems very likely, in fact, that President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair knew full well that their actions would ultimately exacerbate the situation. Chomsky also points out that if the United States was genuinely concerned with ending the horrors of genocide, its continued financial and military support of repressive regimes in countries like Turkey and Indonesia is at the very least extremely puzzling." -- Amazon.com

Kristin Dawkins

Seven Stories Press

"Gene Wars is a succinct, impassioned argument against corporate control of food plant genes. The author, a senior fellow at the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy, discusses monoculture crops, pesticide use, government agricultural subsidies, NAFTA, and genetic diversity in building her case against globalization and the patenting of genes. Her stance is strongly activist, and her knowledge of these topics is extensive and impressive. Scientific breakthroughs in food production are reaching their limits, she writes, and the answers don't lie in more and better technology: 'Perhaps most alarming about this future is the likelihood that despite new technologies, the number of people in the world going hungry will actually increase.'" -- Amazon.com

Edward Herman

Peter Lang, 1999

"Edward Herman's invaluable studies of the media in market-oriented democracies find their natural place in the broader sweep of contemporary history. Herman quotes James Madison's observation in later life that 'a popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or tragedy, or perhaps both.' The observation is apt; formal guarantees of personal freedom do not suffice to prevent the farce or the tragedy, even if the guarantees are observed. These issues, explored and illuminated in (these) essays..., should be at the center of the concerns of those who seek to create a society that is more free and more just." -- From the Preface by Noam Chomsky

Robert McChesney

Cassell, 1997.

"If we believe that an informed populace is an integral part of a successfully active democracy, writes Robert W. McChesney, then the commercial basis of U.S. media, in which a substantial number of media outlets are owned by a handful of corporations, is definite cause for concern. When corporations control the flow of information, he suggests, they will inevitably do so in a way that promotes their own interests over those of the citizenry. From an analysis of the corporate influence over the 1934 Communications Act to a discussion of how media convergence might kill off hope of the Internet bringing about a revolution, he debunks the myth of an objective, liberal media and emphasizes the belief that issues of media ownership should be treated as matters of public policy rather than strictly business." -- Amazon.com

Howard Zinn

The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy

Seven Stories Press, 1997

"A welcome collection of essays and occasional pieces by the dean of radical American historians. This portly tome is primarily intended for the Howard Zinn faithful, of course, of whom there are likely to be many; his People's History of the United States has sold 400,000 copies, after all. For the uninitiated, this collection offers a useful introduction to Zinn's idealistic, Marxist-anarchist view of the world, a view he has championed for many decades. Zinn began his career as a historian at Atlanta's Spelman College, then a school for African-American women; fittingly, a large part of his book is given over to first-hand reports on the civil-rights movement in the South. " -- Kirkus Reviews