Synopses & Reviews
Review
"Ronald Collins and David Skover boldly raise hard questions...that are seldom considered by liberals or conservatives when discussing free speech....The Death of Discourse is literary dynamite ready to demolish the pomp and hypocrisy obstructing the proud edifice of the First Amendment. This book poses a clear and present danger in the most deserving sense." Leonard W. Levy, Pulitzer Prize recipient and author of Emergence of a Free Press
Review
"A stimulating tract on freedom of expression...a marvelously written, multi-layered, complex, and imaginative work, a veritable mobius strip. Like no other, this book is an aural, visual, and cerebral experience." Nadine Strossen, President of the ACLU
Review
"No one has examined more carefully the interrelationships among commerce, culture, and discourse than Collins and Skover. They offer a learned, thought-provoking, and frightening account of what has happened to freedom of expression." Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death
Review
"No other book on the First Amendment even approximates it or rivals its creativity." David M. O'Brien, author of Constitutional Law & Politics
Synopsis
In this innovative book, the authors persuasively argue that the First Amendment to the Constitution has risen in the late twentieth century, like an ill-guided individual with knife in hand, to murder a long-standing tradition of fine and meaningful discourse in the United States. What has died is the essential kind of political discourse which promotes democracy; informs citizens; enlivens debate; and carries reason, method, and purpose. Instead, we are bombarded with the cacophony of advertisement, the luridity of pornography, and the pointlessness of prime time.With satirical spirit and wityet to a very serious purpose the narrative of this lively study calls upon many of the very tricks it criticizes. The text is augmented by amusing tales, poetry, tv zaps, eyebites, and boxes of aphorisms resonating between high and low culture, between Plato and Geraldo and Madonna and Mahler to make its points, the discussion reveals how discourse in contemporary America has lost its integrity and its soul."