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The United States government often invokes a moral imperative to honor human rights as justification for its foreign-policy decisions. But, according to Noam Chomsky, America’s actual track record falls far short of the principles iterated in 1948’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights–the accepted international standard. This slim but passionate volume lists case after case in which the United States has provided aid to grossly abusive regimes–among which Chomsky includes Israel and Indonesia–and examples of how the American government seeks to limit the human rights of its own citizens. With equal criticism for Democrat and Republican administrations, The Umbrella of U.S. Power refuses to remain silent about “the things it ‘wouldn’t do’ to mention” as it works to expose the contradictions between what government leaders tell their people and what they actually do. –Ron Hogan