Freedom of speech
Subtitle: mightier than the sword
By: David K. Shipler
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 336
ISBN-13: 9780307957320
Subjects: United States; Freedom of speech
Description: "From the longtime New York Times reporter, best-selling author, and Pulitzer Prize winner-- an expansive, timely assessment of the state of free speech in America. David Shipler's recent best seller, The Working Poor, cemented his place among our most trenchant social commentators. Now, he turns his keen, illuminating focus to another endangered American ideal: freedom of speech. Through selected accounts of First Amendment invocation and infringement, Shipler maps a rapidly shifting topography of political and cultural norms: parents in Michigan rallying to teachers vilified for their reading lists; conservative ministers risking their churches' tax-exempt status to preach politics from the pulpit; national security reporters using techniques more common in dictatorships to avoid leak prosecution; history teachers in Texas quietly navigating around a conservative curriculum to give students access to unapproved perspectives. Anchored in personal stories--sometimes shocking, sometimes absurd, sometimes dishearteningly familiar--but encompassing a theme as sweeping and essential as democracy itself, Freedom of Speech brilliantly reveals the triumphs and challenges of defining and protecting the boundaries of free expression in modern America"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The landscape : zones of silence, zones of speech; title: Books. Trouble in River City ; The discerning audience ; Fear of reading; title: Secrets. The loneliness of Thomas Tamm ; Thomas Drake and friends ; The new war correspondents; title: Stereotypes. The cultural limits of bigotry ; The Protocols of the Elders of Islam; title: Politics. Money is speech, poverty is silence ; True believers; title: Plays. Red lines and black lists ; Post-traumatic syndrome of another kind ; The drama behind the drama.