ABFFE Book of the Month

The ABFFE Book of the Month feature is an effort to help publicize important books about free speech.  Previous ABFFE Books of the Month are listed in reverse chronological order.  Click on the titles to read author interviews. Click here for book reviews by Audrey Eisman.

November 2009:
            Lane, Frederick S. American Privacy: The 400-Year History of Our Most Contested Right (Boston, MA: Beacon Press), 978-0-807044414.

July 2009:
            Hamilton, Tim. Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: The Authorized Adaptation (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Grioux), 978-0-8090-5100-7.

May 2009:
            Morrison, Toni (ed.) Burn this Book (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009), 978-0-06-177400-3.

January/February 2009:
            Feldman, Stephen M. Free Expression and Democracy in America: A History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 978-0226240664.

December 2008:
            Wittern-Keller, Laura and Raymond J. Haberski, Jr. The Miracle Case: Film Censorship and the Supreme Court (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2008), 978-0700616183.

October/November 2008:
            Scherer, Mark R. Rights in the Balance: Free Press, Fair Trial, and Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 2008), 978-0896726260.

September, 2008:
            Wartzman, Rick. Obscene in the Extreme: the Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (New York: Public Affairs, 2008), 978-1586483319.

August, 2008:
            Schultz, Bud and Ruth Schultz. We Will Be Heard: Voices in the Struggle for Constitutional Rights Past and Present (New York: Merrell, 2008), 978-1858944418.

June/July, 2008:
            Siegel, Barry. Claim of Privilege: A Mysterious Plane Crash, a Landmark Supreme Court Case, and the Rise of State Secrets (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 978-0060777029.

May, 2008:
            Lichtblau, Eric. Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice (New York: Pantheon, 2008), 978-0375424922.

March/April, 2008:
            Hajdu, David. The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), 978-0374187675.

February, 2008:
         Wright, Ann and Susan Dixon. Dissent: Voices of Conscience (Kihei, HI: Koa Books, 2008), 978-0977333844.

January, 2008:
          Lewis, Anthony. Freedom for the Thought That We Hate (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 978-0465039173.

December, 2007:
          Rothschild, Matthew. You Have No Rights: Stories of America in an Age of Repression (New York: The New Press, 2007), 978-1595581648.

November, 2007:
          Wiegand, Shirley A. and Wayne Wiegand. Books on Trial: Red Scare in the Heartland (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), 978-0806138688.

September, 2007:
          Pearlstine, Norman. Off the Record: The Press, the Government and the War Over Anonymous Sources (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 978-0374224493.

July, 2007:
          Barry, Bruce. Speechless: The Erosion of Free Expression in the American Workplace (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2007), 978-1576753972.

For more titles on free expression, click here to go to the First Amendment Bookshelf.

Book Reviews by Audrey Eisman

          Everitt, David. A Shadow of Red: Communism and the Blacklist in Radio and Television (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 2007), 978-1566635752. Click here to read review.

          Solomon, Stephen D. Ellery’s Protest: How One Young Man Defied Tradition and Sparked the Battle over School Prayer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 978-0472108374. Click here to read review.

            Temkin, Moshik. The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 978-0300124842. Click here to read review.

            Woodward, Mary. In Defense of Our Neighbors: The Walt and Milly Woodward Story (Bainbridge Island, WA: Fenwick Publishing, 2008), 978-0974951072. Click here to read review.

Audrey Eisman spent several years working for ABFFE and the American Booksellers Association. During that time, she helped to organize Banned Books Week, the ABFFE silent auctions, and other ABFFE events. She also wrote book reviews for ABFFE. Since then, she has been a fundraiser for various non-profit organizations, is working on a book of her own, and serves as our free-lance book reviewer.

Other titles of interest:

             Cooke, John Byrne. Reporting the War: Freedom of the Press from the American Revolution to the War on Terrorism (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), 978-14039-75157.

             Rodgers, Marion Elizabeth. Mencken: The American Iconoclast: The Life and Times of the Bad Boy of Baltimore (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 978-0195072389.