A Biography of the First Amendment
by Anthony Lewis
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Published Dec 2007
224 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
More than any other people on earth, Americans are free to say and write what they think. The media can air the secrets of the White House, the boardroom, or the bedroom with little fear of punishment or penalty. The reason for this extraordinary freedom is not a superior culture of tolerance, but just fourteen words in our most fundamental legal document: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
In Lewis's telling, the story of how the right of free expression evolved along with our nation makes a compelling case for the adaptability of our constitution. Although Americans have gleefully and sometimes outrageously exercised their right to free speech since before the nation's founding, the Supreme Court did not begin to recognize this right until 1919. Freedom of speech and the press as we know it today is surprisingly recent. Anthony Lewis tells us how these rights were created, revealing a story of hard choices, heroic (and some less heroic) judges, and fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face-to-face with one of America's great founding ideas.
"Starred Review. Timely and important, a work that astonishes and delights as it informs." - Kirkus Reviews.
"[A]n occasionally stirring account of America's evolving idea of liberty." - Publishers Weekly.
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Anthony Lewis (March 27, 1927 – March 25, 2013) was a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and one of the foremost thinkers on freedom of speech and First Amendment rights.
In a distinguished career at The New York Times, Lewis served as columnist, bureau chief in London, and reporter in Washington covering the Supreme Court, the Justice Department, and legal affairs. His coverage of the court won a Pulitzer in 1963. His first Pulitzer, in 1955, came when, as a reporter for the Washington Daily News, he wrote a series of stories on the improper dismissal of a Naval employee. The articles led to the employee's reinstatement.
Lewis was a tireless scholar of journalism, having taught and lectured at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism as well as Harvard University. He is the author of five books including Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment and Gideon's Trumpet, which won the Edgar Award in 1965 and has sold nearly a million copies in over forty years in print . His last book, Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment, was published in 2008.
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