"During the Great Depression, which I am old enough to remember, things were bad - subjectively, much worse compared to today. However, there was a sense that somehow we would make it, an expectation that the situation would improve...".

In his first major book on income inequality, Noam Chomsky dissects the fundamental tenets of neoliberalism and examines, with a clear, cool, and patient gaze, the economic realities of life. What are the ten basic principles for the accumulation of wealth and power in America and the Western world today? In "Requiem for the American Dream," Chomsky dedicates a chapter to each of these ten basic principles and presents excerpts from key texts that have influenced his thinking, in order to bolster his arguments.

For the creation of "Requiem for the American Dream," Chomsky and his editors, filmmakers Peter Hutchison, Kelly Nyks, and Jared P. Scott, spent countless hours together over a five-year period, from 2011 to 2016. After the release of the film version, Chomsky and the editors returned to the many hours of recorded material and transcriptions, creating a document with three times as much text as the film. The resulting book is undoubtedly the most comprehensive and condensed in Chomsky's long career, a beautiful vehicle for conveying his bold and uncompromising vision and his perspective on the economic reality and its impact on the political and moral well-being of America as a nation.