Product Description: This easy-to-use core reference takes on the biggest issue of our day: freedom of speech in post-9/11 America. No issue is more important to Americans―and especially to librarians―than the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act is one of the longest, broadest, most sweeping pieces of legislation in American history...read more

Product Description: Arguing that the media in the United States is extensively controlled by corporate and government forces, this commentary on modern journalism considers 10 recent controversies, detailing the ways in which the media was prevented from fully exercising its right to free speech...read more

Product Description: Killing the Messenger reveals the dangerous new face of war and journalism. Covering armed conflicts has always been dangerous business, but in the past, press heroes like Ernie Pyle and Edward R. Murrow faced only the danger of random bullets or bombs...read more

Provides a history of U.S. government surveillance of libraries and offers a description of the provisions of the Patriot Act that directly affect libraries and bookstores.

Looks at censorship in American schools and libraries, and includes a section of the fifty most banned books from 1996 through 2000, including newcomer Harry Potter. (view table of contents)

Product Description: This examination of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) traces the American origins of the belief that the citizens of a democracy have a natural right to know about the workings of their government. The issue began in the colonies and came to a head in the 1950s when escalating government secrecy led the press to demand open government...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Examines the history of censorship in the media, discusses seven prominent cases of media censorship, and presents a chronological history of twenty-eight media-censorship court cases since 1812 (view table of contents)

Product Description: Despite the end of the Cold War, America's national security apparatus for controlling information has remained in place. However, sex and secularism are emerging as the major targets of censorship. Federal decency standards have been imposed on art, the broadcast media, and the Internet...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Climbing the Hill explores the history and current status of women members and staff on Capitol Hill. It traces the difficult history of women in Congress, their slow and painful path to political power and their hopes and fears of today...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Discusses scientific secrecy and how it is counterproductive to American interests in a time when economics has come to define national security (view table of contents)

Product Description: Foerstel, himself one of the leaders in the effort to expose the FBI's notorious `spies in the stacks' program, writes as a partisan of privacy rights with a well-earned distrust of the FBI's efforts to excuse itself from observing those rights...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)