Metacritic Books

Perilous Times
by Geoffrey R. Stone

ISBN: 0393058808
W. W. Norton & Company, 730 pages, $35.00
Nonfiction Current Events & Politics, History
Released 10/25/2004

Constitutional scholar and law professor Geoffrey R. Stone analyzes six different periods throughout American history (as well as a brief look at the current administration) where wars have led to the repression of free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Overall Metascore

This is an average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

88 / 100

Critic Reviews

Outstanding Publishers Weekly
Comprehensive and consistently readable, this enlightening book arrives at a time when national political debate should be at a fever pitch.
Outstanding Christian Science Monitor Steve Weinberg
When the characters in this avalanche of history become actors in an interestingly told drama, their individual stories are deeply memorable.
Outstanding Los Angeles Times Herbert Mitgang
So rich in material is Perilous Times, a chronicle of the tribulations of the 1st Amendment in wartime, that this scholarly yet highly readable book amounts to an anecdotal history of the United States itself, from the Founding Fathers to the present. [24 Oct 2004, p.R3]
Outstanding The New York Times Book Review Christopher Hitchens
One closes this admirable book more than ever determined that the authors of the Constitution were right the first time, and that the only amendment necessary might be a prohibition on the passage of any law within six months of any atrocity, foreign or domestic.
Outstanding USA Today Tony Mauro
A powerful history... This very readable, illustrated book will make you think differently about icons such as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.
Outstanding Washington Post Christopher Capozzola
A masterful history of free speech in wartime America... We have long needed this book, though perhaps never as badly as we do today.
Outstanding The New Republic Stephen Holmes
By chronicling the most serious historical deviations from our ordinary constitutional order, therefore, Geoffrey Stone's outstanding book alarms as much as it clarifies.
Outstanding New York Review Of Books Edmund S. Morgan, Marie Morgan
Engrossing... This is a book whose discerning legal and constitutional analysis, clear prose, and humane outlook deserve the highest praise.
Favorable Chicago Tribune Eric Arnesen
Although Stone only touches the surface of the war on terrorism, his informed and nuanced exploration of historical restrictions on wartime dissent and free speech are sobering and relevant to our current situation.
Favorable Wall Street Journal Jonathan Karl
Mr. Stone is a constitutional scholar and a zealous defender of free speech, but he is also a great storyteller.
Favorable The New York Times Michiko Kakutani
While the reader may wish that Mr. Stone had spent more space in this volume analyzing the Patriot Act and post-9/11 attitudes toward civil liberties -- he devotes a mere eight pages to the subject near the end of the book -- this quibble should not detract from the overall achievement of this volume.
Favorable Booklist Vernon Ford
An engaging mixture of history and law. [1 Nov 2004, p.449]
Favorable Kirkus Reviews
Most timely, and of wide interest to civil libertarians and students of legal history.
Mixed Boston Globe Alan M. Dershowitz
Valuable as it surely is, its basic thesis is highly questionable... By not telling us much about state efforts to punish individuals for exercising their freedom of speech in peacetime, Stone exaggerates the role of war in the history of American censorship.

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