The Death of Discourse

This is an elegant, insightful, thought-provoking look at, essentially, the struggle between two different ideas of the First Amendment: The rather narrow notion of the First Amendment as protecting only political speech or speech that enhances democratic debate versus the more free-wheeling idea that the First Amendment protects all speech, from pornography to offensive literature. While I believe a truly free society must embrace the latter position, I find the authors compellingly present the views on both sides of the issue, and they do so via a playful, socratic dialectic rather than a dry rehashing of esoteric law review articles. I recommend this book for anyone who seeks to understand the pressure the first amendment is subjected to by our modern society.