Chomsky, this book’s author, is considered a leading thinker and foundational figure in modern linguistics and cognitive science. He was born in Philadelphia to Jewish immigrant parents, who encouraged his academic interests. As a teen, Chomsky often traveled to New York City, where he associated with working-class Jewish intellectual groups. As a result, he discovered and identified with anarchism early in life. He was first inspired by the writings of Rudolf Rocker, who highlighted the similarities between classical liberalism and anarchism. Exploring the works of other Marxists and democratic socialists convinced Chomsky of the desirability of anarcho-syndicalism, a school of thought within anarchism that promotes unions to empower workers in a capitalist society.

At age 16, Chomsky attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he developed an interest in structural linguistics due to the influence of Zellig Harris. In 1951, Chomsky became a junior fellow at Harvard University and a year later published Systems of Syntactic Analysis. In 1955, he completed his PhD dissertation, titled Structure of Linguistic Theory (LSLT), and was awarded a degree. However, his work, which caused academic backlash due to its novel claims, went unpublished until 1975. One year later, Chomsky began working as a lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he explored cognitive science.