A “timely and brilliant original” (Michael B. Mukasey, former US attorney general) look at freedom of speech—our most basic right and the one that protects all the others.

Free speech is a human right, and the free expression of thought is at the very essence of being human. The United States was founded on this premise, and the First Amendment remains the single greatest constitutional commitment to the right of free expression in history. Yet there is a systemic effort to bar opposing viewpoints on subjects ranging from racial discrimination to police abuse, from climate change to gender equity. These measures are reinforced by the public’s anger and rage; flash mobs appear today with the slightest provocation. We all lash out against anyone or anything that stands against our preferred certainty.

The Indispensable Right places the current attacks on free speech in their proper historical, legal, and political context. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were not only written for times like these, but in a time like this. This country was born in an age of rage and for 250 years we have periodically lost sight of the value of free expression. The history of the struggle for free speech is the story of extraordinary people—nonconformists who refuse to yield to abusive authority—and here is a mosaic of vivid characters and controversies.

Johnathan Turley “has written a learned and bracing book, rigorously detailed and unfailingly evenhanded” (The Wall Street Journal) showing us the unique dangers of our current moment. The alliance of academic, media, and corporate interests with the government’s traditional wish to control speech has put us on an almost irresistible path toward censorship. The Indispensable Right is a “magnum opus should be required reading for everyone who cares about free speech” (Nadine Strossen, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union) that reminds us that we remain a nation grappling with the implications of free expression and with the limits of our tolerance for the speech of others. For rather than a political crisis, this is a crisis of faith.

Whose job is it to teach the public about sex? Parents? The churches? The schools? And what should they be taught? These questions have sparked some of the most heated political debates in recent American history, most recently the battle between proponents of comprehensive sex education and those in favor of an "abstinence-only" curriculum. Kristy Slominski shows that these questions have a long, complex, and surprising history. Teaching Moral Sex is the first comprehensive study of the role of religion in the history of public sex education in the United States. The field of sex education, Slominski shows, was created through a collaboration between religious sex educators-primarily liberal Protestants, along with some Catholics and Reform Jews-and "men of science"-namely physicians, biology professors, and social scientists. She argues that the work of early religious sex educators laid the foundation for both sides of contemporary controversies that are now often treated as disputes between "religious" and "secular" Americans. Slominski examines the religious contributions to national sex education organizations from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first. Far from being a barrier to sex education, she demonstrates, religion has been deeply embedded in the history of sex education, and its legacy has shaped the terms of current debates. Focusing on religion uncovers an under-recognized cast of characters-including Quaker and Unitarian social purity reformers, military chaplains, and the Young Men's Christian Association- who, Slominski deftly shows, worked to make sex education more acceptable to the public through a strategic combination of progressive and restrictive approaches to sexuality. Teaching Moral Sex highlights the essential contributions of religious actors to the movement for sex education in the United States and reveals where their influence can still be felt today.

Aged fifteen, armed with a credit card stolen from his father, Jonny Oates ran away from home and boarded a plane to Addis Ababa. His plan? To save the Ethiopian people from the devastating 1985 famine. Discovering that demand for the assistance of unskilled fifteen-year-old English boys was limited, he swiftly learned that you can't change the world by pure force of will - a lesson that would prove invaluable in politics. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden charts Oates's journey from his darkest moments alone in Ethiopia, struggling with his sexuality and mental health, to the heart of Westminster, where, as Nick Clegg's chief of staff, he grapples with the compromises and concessions of coalition. Shot through with a captivating warmth and humour, this heart-stoppingly candid memoir reflects on the challenges of balancing idealism and pragmatism, illustrating how lasting change comes from working together rather than standing alone.

The Greatest Lie Ever Told takes the reader on a historical voyage, using wit and logic to reveal the evidence of research that no one wanted you to see. The author reveals that Egypt had a monotheistic religion, not one with a pantheon of gods, gives the evidence to explain the Exodus, traces the Old and New Testaments back to Egypt, explains why most of the characters in the Old Testament are fictitious, shows that the original Jews did not migrate to a 'Promised Land, ' they were always there. Jews, Christians and Muslims have been grossly mislead about their religions. All three were perverted from their shared origins, by politics, avarice and greed. The greatest of these perversions is Christianity. Academics knew the truth but dared not publish it. Church leaders knew the truth about Jesus but lied to hide it. They know that Christianity is one of many monotheistic religions based on an identical theme and they carried out a ruthless and bloodthirsty campaign which has failed to eradicate the truth. The author proves his allegations, presents truth not speculation and shows where the future path of the Church must lie. The Greatest Lie Ever Told isn't some vague conjecture, it is a fact.

In these passionate and wide-ranging essays Obery Hendricks offers a challenging engagement with spirituality, economics, politics, contemporary Christianity, and the abuses committed in its name. Among his themes: the gap between the spirituality of the church and the spirituality of Jesus; the ways in which contemporary versions of gospel music "sensationalize" today's churches into social and political irrelevance; how the economic principles and policies espoused by the religious right betray the most basic principles of the same biblical tradition they claim to hold dear; the domestication of Martin Luther King's message to foster a political complacency that dishonors King's sacrifices. He ends with a stinging rebuke of the religious right's idolatrous "patriotism" in a radical manifesto for those who would practice "the politics of Jesus" in the public sphere.

The belief that Native Americans might belong to the fabled "lost tribes of Israel"-Israelites driven from their homeland around 740 BCE-took hold among Anglo-Americans and Indigenous peoples in the United States during its first half century. In Lost Tribes Found, Matthew W. Dougherty explores what this idea can tell us about religious nationalism in early America. Some white Protestants, Mormons, American Jews, and Indigenous people constructed nationalist narratives around the then-popular idea of "Israelite Indians." Although these were minority viewpoints, they reveal that the story of religion and nationalism in the early United States was more complicated and wide-ranging than studies of American "chosen-ness" or "manifest destiny" suggest. Telling stories about Israelite Indians, Dougherty argues, allowed members of specific communities to understand the expanding United States, to envision its transformation, and to propose competing forms of sovereignty. In these stories both settler and Indigenous intellectuals found biblical explanations for the American empire and its stark racial hierarchy. Lost Tribes Found goes beyond the legal and political structure of the nineteenth-century U.S. empire. In showing how the trope of the Israelite Indian appealed to the emotions that bound together both nations and religious groups, the book adds a new dimension and complexity to our understanding of the history and underlying narratives of early America.