worrisome feature of U.S. culture that is unique amongst industrial countries and has undermined democracy. He concludes that his goal in teaching and research has been to understand something about the human mind whilst his goal in activism has been to help people become engaged in overcoming human suffering. Nine: Another World is Possible In this interview conducted in Lexington, Massachusetts on February 8, 2005, Chomsky begins by stating that the U.S. has been a deeply religious country since its settlement by fundamentalists and that the typical inverse correlation between extremist religious belief and industrialization breaks down in this case. He states that since U.S. President Jimmy Carter there has been a conscious takeover of the electoral system by the public relations industry, which sells candidates as Bible-fearing evangelical Christians, and that this process can be observed in other aspects of American life as an undeniable aspect of U.S. exceptionalism, which he attributes in part to the country's strong sense of insecurity. He then turns his attention to the planning of the U.S. economy, which he claims has over the preceding 30 years shifted to benefit the corporations and the superrich at the cost of the general population and future generations. He theorises that economists have highly ideological ways of measuring costs which by concentrating on productivity shifts costs to the consumer creating what is in actuality an extremely inefficient system as a whole. He concludes that the U.S. is a failed state with basic institutions that are totally illegitimate, but he hopes one-day it will become as democratic as Brazil or Haiti. Reviews David Swanson writing in Political Affairs Magazine commends Barsamian for consistently asking "penetrating and provocative questions", and states that this book is an "ideal place to start" for readers not familiar with Chomsky whilst those that are will still be surprised by his "analyses of recent events". Swanson comments on Chomsky's philosophical background but states that this book "contains none of Chomsky the philosopher"; rather it is "purely the political activist", and when he "turns to politics he forswears not only pretentious language but also metaphysical theories of history" so that in these interviews he "is completely down to earth and pragmatic". Swanson references Chomsky's example of the Mexican ambassador's comment to U.S. President Kennedy that "If we publicly declare that Cuba is a threat to our security, forty million Mexicans will die laughing" in his