Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. A member of the American Academy of Science, he has published widely in both linguistics and current affairs.

His books include At War with Asia, Towards a New Cold War, Fateful Triangle: The U. S., Israel and the Palestinians, Necessary Illusions, Hegemony or Survival, Deterring Democracy, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy and Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.

Noam Chomsky was recently named the world's number-one public intellectual in a poll by Prospect magazine. He is the author of numerous bestselling political works, including Hegemony or Survival, Imperial Ambitions and Failed States, all of which are published by Hamish Hamilton and Penguin.

Noam Chomsky is a professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT, and is widely credited with having revolutionized modern linguistics.

Born in Montreal in 1970, Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and author of the international bestseller No Logo, which was shortlisted for the Guardian first book award. Translated into twenty-five languages, No Logo was called "a movement bible" and placed Naomi Klein at the vanguard of a new wave of considering globalisation and corporations.

In Blank is Beautiful, Klein will once again revolutionize our way of thinking. Naomi Klein writes an internationally syndicated column for the Guardian and her articles appear in numerous publications, including The Nation, The New Statesman, Newsweek International, the New York Times and the Village Voice.

A collection of her work, titled Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate, was published in October 2002. For the past six years, Klein has travelled throughout North America, Asia, Latin America and Europe, tracking the rise of anticorporate activism. She is a frequent media commentator and university guest lecturer and was a Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics. Her latest book is The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Penguin, 2007).

Raymond Williams (1921 1988) was for many years Professor of Drama at the University of Cambridge.

Among his many books are Culture and Society, Culture and Materialism, Politics and Letters, Problems in Materialism and Culture, and several novels.