Real

True Narratives

This part of our narrative finds much of its voice in the negative:

• Edwin Baker, Human Liberty and Freedom of Speech (Oxford University Press, 1992).
• Steven J. Heyman, Free Speech and Human Dignity (Yale University Press, 2008).
• Robert L. Tsai, Eloquence and Reason: Creating a First Amendment Culture (Yale University Press,2008).
• James Boyd White, Living Speech: Resisting the Empire of Force (Princeton University Press, 2006).
• Ivan Hare and James Weinstein, eds., Extreme Speech and Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2009).
• Stewart Justman, The Springs of Liberty: The Satiric Tradition and Freedom of Speech (Northwestern University Press, 1999).

Freedom of the press: on the endangered art and practice of journalism:

• Anthony Lewis, Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment (Random House, 1991).
• Geoffrey Kemp, Jason McElligott, Cyndia Clegg and Mark Goldie, eds., Censorship and the Press, 1580-1720 (Pickering and Chatto Publishers, 2009).
• Cyndia Susan Clegg, Press Censorship in Jacobean England (Cambridge University Press, 2001).
• Cyndia Susan Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
• Cyndia Susan Clegg, Press Censorship in Caroline England (Cambridge University Press, 2008).
• Alan Rusbridger, Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now (Farrar,m Straus & Giroux, 2018): “Rusbridger’s anguish over the assault on fact is leavened by rueful recognition that Trump’s abuses, in partnership with social media’s penchant for magnifying them, may carry a pale silver lining.”
• Jill Abramson, Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts (Simon & Schuster, 2019): “She uses her book to mount an expert and passionate defense of old-school journalism. But she overlooks some of its core tenets to do it.”
• Harold Holzer, The Presidents vs. the Press: The Endless Battle Between the White House and the Media – From the Founding Fathers to Fake News (Dutton, 2020): “For all of Trump’s transgressions against the press — and they are many — Holzer’s book offers evidence that he’s not the greatest enemy of the First Amendment to have occupied the White House. He might not even rank in the top five.”
• Katherine Corcoran, In the Mouth of the Wolf: A Murder, a Cover-Up and the True Cost of Silencing the Press (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022): “The killing of the journalist Regina Martínez prompted Katherine Corcoran to examine both the murder itself and the news media in Mexico.”

Free speech in the arts:

• Laura Wittern Keller and Raymond J. Haberski, The Miracle Case: Film Censorship and the Supreme Court (University Press of Kansas, 2008).
• Laura Wittern Keller, Freedom of the Screen: Legal Challenges to State Film Censorship, 1915-1981 (University Press of Kentucky, 2008).
• Francis G. Couvares, Movie Censorship and American Culture (Smithsonian, 1996).
• Deborah Nadoolman Landis, Hollywood Costume (Abrams, 2013): “Even the slightest shadow that suggested cleavage could suspend production.”

Free speech under attack for political/ideological reasons:

• Philippa Strum, When the Nazis Came to Skokie: Freedom for Speech We Hate (University of Kansas Press, 1999).
• David Cressey, Dangerous Talk: Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in Pre-Modern England (Oxford University Press, 2010).
• Evan Gerstmann and Matthew Streb, Academic Freedom at the Dawn of a New Century: How Terrorism, Governments, and Culture Wars Affect Free Speech (Stanford University Press, 2006).
• Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals (Doubleday, 2008).

Free speech in the United States:

• Geoffrey R. Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terror (W. W. Norton & Co., 2004).
• Ronald K.L. Collins and Sam Chaltain, We Must Not Be Afraid to Be Free: Stories of Free Expression in America (Oxford University Press, 2011).
• Sarat Austin, Speech and Silence in American Law (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
• Philip I. Blumberg, Repressive Jurisprudence in the Early American Republic: The First Amendment and the Legacy of English Law (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
• John W. Johnson, The Struggle for Student Rights: Tinker v. Des Moines and the 1960s (University of Kansas Press, 1997).
• Anthony Lewis, Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment (Basic Books, 2008).
• Christopher M. Finan, From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America (Beacon Press, 2007).
• David M. Rabban, Free Speech in its Forgotten Years: 1870-1920 (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
• Richard Polenberg, Fighting Faiths: The Abrams Case, the Supreme Court, and Free Speech (Viking Adult, 1987).

Ancient traditions:

• Joseph Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule (Princeton University Press,1998).
• Arlene W. Saxonhouse, Free Speech and Democracy in Ancient Athens (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Free speech in Britain:

• David Colclough, Freedom of Speech in Early Stuart England (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
• Andrew Hadfield, Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England (Palgrave MacMillan, 2001).

Free speech in Asia:

• David Kelly and Anthony Reid, eds., Asian Freedoms: The Idea of Freedom in East and Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
• Robert Taylor, The Idea of Freedom in Asia and Africa (Stanford University Press, 2002).

Documentary and Educational Films

• Shut Up & Sing, about how the country music group The Dixie Chicks was intimidated, threatened and ostracized for expressing a political opinion
• Afghan Star: how a popular television show began to open Afghani culture to music
• Welcome to Leith: You may be tempted to side with the people opposing free speech. The film can serve as a lesson for the importance of principle, or for the lesson that no principle is perfect.