Volume 56, Number 11 · July 2, 2009
Justice Holmes and the 'Splendid Prisoner'
By Anthony Lewis
Democracy's Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent
by Ernest Freeberg
Harvard University Press, 380 pp., $29.95
Eugene Debs is a largely forgotten man today, an odd footnote in American history of the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But this fascinating book about his climactic last years makes clear that he really mattered. In both political and legal ways he played a significant part in reducing intolerance of dissent in this country, and bringing to life the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech.
Review, 3836 words
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