By David K. Shipler
A provocative, well timed evaluate of the kingdom of loose speech in America
With his top vendor The operating terrible, Pulitzer Prize winner and previous ny instances veteran David ok. Shipler cemented his position between our so much trenchant social commentators. Now he turns his incisive reporting to a serious American excellent: freedom of speech. Anchored in own stories—sometimes surprising, occasionally absurd, occasionally dishearteningly familiar—Shipler’s investigations of the cultural limits on either expression and the willingness to pay attention construct to show troubling instabilities within the very foundations of our democracy.
Focusing on fresh loose speech controversies around the country, Shipler maps a quickly moving topography of political and cultural norms: mom and dad in Michigan rallying to academics vilified for his or her studying lists; conservative ministers risking their churches’ tax-exempt prestige to evangelise politics from the pulpit; nationwide protection journalists utilizing concepts extra universal in dictatorships to prevent leak prosecution; a Washington, D.C., Jewish theater’s fight for inventive regulate within the face of protests focusing on productions severe of Israel; historical past academics in Texas quietly bypassing a reactionary curriculum to offer scholars entry to unapproved views; the combined benefits of the web as a discussion board for discussion approximately race.
These and different tales coalesce to bare the systemic styles of either suppression and chance which are making this present day a transitional second for the way forward for one in all our founding rules. Measured but sweeping, Freedom of Speech brilliantly finds the triumphs and demanding situations of defining and maintaining the bounds of loose expression in glossy America.
Source: Amazon.com Retail AZW3 (via library)