The world’s leading intellectual offers a probing examination of the waning American Century, the nature of U.S. policies post-9/11, and the perils of valuing power above democracy and human rights. "The author pulls no punches while dismantling the mainstream narrative about the Cuban Missile Crisis, American exceptionalism, the threat posed by Iran, and, through many lenses, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A key theme in this work is that the stories Americans tell about themselves are precisely that: stories. Received wisdom and mainstream history conveniently ignore the hard-to-swallow stories of U.S. support for dictators in the Middle East and Central and South America." - Publishers Weekly. "It is possible that, if the United States goes the way of nineteenth-century Britain, Chomsky's interpretation will be the standard among historians a hundred years from now." - The New Yorker "For anyone wanting to find out more about the world we live in . . . there is one simple answer: read Noam Chomsky." - New Statesman