Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader

City Lights Books, 2007
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Internationally acclaimed, award winning author Michael Parenti is one of America's most astute and engaging political analysts. Covering a wide range of subjects, Parenti's work has enlightened and enlivened readers for many years. Here is a rich buffet of his deep but lucid writings on real history, political life, empire, wealth, class power, technology, culture, ideology, media, environment, gender, and ethnicity---along with a few choice selections drawn from his own life experiences and political awakening.

Parenti goes where few political observers dare to tread. Time and again he takes the extra step beyond the parameters of safe permissible opinion, and time and again he succeeds in carrying the reader with him. Writing with cool passion and pleasing style, he is always accessible even when dealing with complex themes. The struggle against plutocracy and for peace and democracy is forever reborn thanks to scholar-activists like Michael Parenti.

Table of Contents

Introduction I. Through the Looking Glass

1. Media Moments
2. Liberal Media Yet to Be Found
3. Methods of Media Manipulation
4. Objectivity and the Dominant Paradigm
5. Repression in Academia

II. Stealing Our Birthright

6. The Stolen Presidential Elections
7. How the Free Market Killed New Orleans
8. Conservative Judicial Activism
9. Why the Corporate Rich Oppose Environmentalism
10. Autos and Atoms
11. What Is to Be Done?

III. Lifestyles and Other People

12. Racist Rule, Then and Now
13. Custom Against Women
14. Are Heterosexuals Worthy of Marriage?
15. That’s Italian? Another Ethnic Stereotype

IV. Roots

16. La Famiglia: An Ethno-Class Experience
17. Bread Story: The Blessings of Private Enterprise
18. My Strange Values

V. A Guide to Concepts and Isms

19. Technology and Money: The Myth of Neutrality
20. False Consciousness
21. Left, Right, and the “Extreme Moderates”
22. State vs. Government
23. Democracy vs. Capitalism
24. Socialism Today?

VI. About Money, Class, and Culture

26. Capital and Labor, an Old Story
27. Wealth, Addiction, and Poverty
24. Monopoly Culture and Social Legitimacy
25. The Flight from Class

VII. Doing the World

30. Imperialism for Beginners
31. The Free Market Paradise Liberates Communist Europe
32. The Rational Destruction of Yugoslavia
33. To Kill Iraq
34. Good Things Happening in Venezuela
35. A Word about Terrorists

VIII. The Rest Is History

36. Dominant History
37. Fascism, the Real Story
38. The Cold War is an Old War
39. The People as “Rabble” and “Mob”