Most of us know Chomsky's work in the political sphere. He is cool, calm, collected and thorough. You can't ruffle him; he is unflappable. He has the facts at his disposal. His calm demeanor is remarkably threatening to his debating opponents. It's fascinating.

This book shows an entire other side of Noam Chomsky, defending his primary territory, linguistics. It was my major, so I had no trouble navigating the concepts, but it was easy for me to see where the uninitiated would simply shut the book and move on to something less painful.

The memorable aspect for me was the animated Noam Chomsky who came right through the text - transcripts of a lecture series at Columbia - with fire and brimstone. Chomsky defends by going on the attack. He accuses his critics and proposers of alternatives of all kinds of intellectual faults and weaknesses - the high crimes and misdemeanors of academia. Chomsky really comes alive in what you might expect to be a flat transcript. For that alone, it was worth the purchase. The actual scientific findings and positions however are still up in the air, 33 years later. ( )