Zellig Harris: From American Linguistics to Socialist Zionism

Zellig Harris's dream of a secular, leftist Zionism, built on cooperation with the indigenous Arab population, has been dashed by history. But his legacy stubbornly survives, not only in the pioneering work he did in the field of linguistics, but also in the inspiration he provided Noam Chomsky, the most outspoken political gadfly of our day. In this rigorously researched, sympathetically cast biography, Robert Barsky rescues from oblivion a figure from the past who may still have much to teach the future. -- Martin Jay , Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley