Censorship

More than two hundred years ago, the Founding Fathers established, with the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the right to freedom of expression and free speech. Since then, the issues of how absolute this "freedom" is and if and when it should be censored have pervaded American thought and laws. Regulations on speech during wartime and freedom of the press dominated the legal controversies at the beginning of the 20th century. Now, at the century's close, issues have arisen over new forms of media and types of electronic communication that our ancestors could never have imagined. In Censorship, Gail Blasser Riley offers an objective overview of these subjects, examining the controversies that surround them in both a historical and a contemporary context.