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More copies of this ISBN:This title in other formats:Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendmentby Anthony Lewis
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:More than any other people on earth, Americans are free to say and write what they think. The media can air the secrets of the White House, the boardroom, or the bedroom with little fear of punishment or penalty. The reason for this extraordinary freedom is not a superior culture of tolerance, but just fourteen words in our most fundamental legal document: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution. In Lewis's telling, the story of how the right of free expression evolved along with our nation makes a compelling case for the adaptability of our constitution. Although Americans have gleefully and sometimes outrageously exercised their right to free speech since before the nation's founding, the Supreme Court did not begin to recognize this right until 1919. Freedom of speech and the press as we know it today is surprisingly recent. Anthony Lewis tells us how these rights were created, revealing a story of hard choices, heroic (and some less heroic) judges, and fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face-to-face with one of America's great founding ideas. Review:"The First Amendment's injunction that 'Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press' seems cut and dried, but its application has had a vexed history, according to this lucid legal history, Lewis's first book in 15 years (after Make No Law and Gideon's Trumpet). Some suppressions of free speech passed constitutional muster in their day: the 1798 Sedition Act criminalized criticism of the president, and the WWI-era Sedition Act sentenced a minister to 15 years in prison for telling his Bible class that 'a Christian can take no part in the war.' Law professor and Pulitzer Prize — winning ex-New York Times columnist Lewis explores other First Amendment legal quagmires, including libel law, privacy issues, the press's shielding of confidential sources, obscenity and hate speech. Not quite a free speech absolutist, he's for punishing 'speech that urges terrorist violence to an audience... whose members are ready to act.' Lewis's story is about the advancement of freedom by the likes of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Louis Brandeis and others whose 'bold judicial decisions have made the country what it is.' The result is an occasionally stirring account of America's evolving idea of liberty. (Jan. 14)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:"[A] paean to the First Amendment and a recognition of its limitations." Providence Journal Review:"[O]ught to be required reading in every high school and college." Hartford Courant Review:[A] short history of the 1st Amendment that is always illuminating and sometimes rollicking." Los Angeles Times Review:"Conservative as well as liberal judges now agree that even speech we hate must be protected, and that is one of the glories of the American constitutional tradition. Anthony Lewis is right to celebrate it." New York Times Synopsis:From one of the country's most esteemed experts on the First Amendment and the author of the classic Gideons Trumpet comes an eloquent essay on the importance of freedom of expression. About the AuthorTwo-time Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Lewis was a columnist for the New York Times op-ed page from 1969 through 2001. Since 1983, Lewis has been the James Madison Visiting Professor at Columbia University. His previous three books are Gideon's Trumpet, which has sold nearly a million copies in over forty years in print; Portrait of a Decade; and Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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