Review by Choice Review
Gearon (Roehampton Univ., UK) has put together an eclectic collection of materials on the theme of freedom of expression. The book starts with quotations from and commentary about Plato, Saint Augustine, Martin Luther, Thomas Paine, and John Stuart Mill, along with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Adolf Hitler, and Chairman Mao. Many UN documents touching on freedom of expression are reprinted. There is further commentary on international organizations both public and private, as well as on the Nobel Prize in Literature. One of the book's better features is a collection of relevant Internet sites. Both the book's structure and some of Gearon's commentary are unusual; for example, he writes that the UN is "a totalitarian organization, preoccupied with extending a uniform legal set of obligations across all nation states" having to do with human rights. He also seems to hold Martin Luther at least partially responsible for the Inquisition because without the Reformation, there would have been no Counter-Reformation featuring the Inquisition. ^BSumming Up: Optional. General readers, lower-division undergraduates. D. P. Forsythe University of Nebraska
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
