The Mind of the Censor and the Eye of the Beholder
The First Amendment and the Censor's Dilemma

The book explores the importance of free speech in America by telling the stories of its chief antagonists – the censors.

Robert Corn-Revere (Author)

9781107129948, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 November 2021

384 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.5 cm, 0.66 kg

'Corn-Revere has written an enjoyable, compelling, and necessary defense of free speech . . . [A] primer on the value of free speech and the danger of censorship that should be handed out in every high school, college campus, faculty meeting, town council, PTA meeting, hospital waiting room, grocery store, barber shop, political debate, house of worship, social media platform, state legislature, and especially the halls of Congress… [An] entertaining, enlightening, and timely book.' Stephen Rohde, Los Angeles Review of Books

Beginning in the nineteenth century with Anthony Comstock, America's 'censor in chief,' The Mind of the Censor and the Eye of the Beholder explores how censors operate and why they wore out their welcome in society at large. This book explains how the same tactics were tried and eventually failed in the twentieth century, with efforts to censor music, comic books, television, and other forms of popular entertainment. The historic examples illustrate not just the mindset and tactics of censors, but why they are the ultimate counterculture warriors and why, in free societies, censors never occupy the moral high ground. This book is for anyone who wants to know more about why freedom of speech is important and how protections for free expression became part of the American identity.

1. The censor's dilemma
2. Anthony Comstock: professional anti-vice crusader
3. Comstock's legacy: a dilemma is born
4. The Comstock playbook
5. Seduction of the innocent: the comic book menace
6. Ya got trouble: censorship and popular music
7. The vast wasteland
8. New age Comstockery: the indecency wars
9. The anti-free speech movement
10. Freedom of speech and the spirit of liberty.

Subject Areas: Constitutional & administrative law [LND], Ethical issues: censorship [JFMD]