Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe

About the Authors

Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia in 1928. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania where he received his PhD in linguistics in 1955. He joined the staff at MIT and was appointed Institute Professor in 1976, gaining international renown for his theories on the acquisition and generation of language. He became well known as an activist and public intellectual during the Vietnam War; he became known as a formidable critic of media with the 1988 release of Manufacturing Consent, a book coauthored with Edward Herman. With the publication of 9/11 in November 2001, inarguably one of the most significant books on the subject, he became as widely read and as an essential a voice internationally as other political philosophers throughout history. That book, like the present volume, was composed from interviews. Chomsky has written and lectured widely on linguistics, philosophy, intellectual history, contemporary issues, international affairs, and US foreign policy. In 2010 Chomsky, Eduardo Galeano, Michael Hardt, Naomi Klein, and Vandana Shiva became signatories to United for Global Democracy, a manifesto created by the international Occupy movement.

Laray Polk was born in Oklahoma in 1961 and currently lives in Dallas, Texas. She is a multimedia artist and writer. Her articles and investigative reports have appeared in the Dallas Morning News, D Magazine, and In These Times. As a 2009 grant recipient from the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute, she produced stories on the political entanglements and compromised science behind the establishment of a radioactive waste disposal site in Texas, situated in close proximity to the Ogallala Aquifer.