This book is a fairly good telling of the stories of several major First Amendment cases. All of them are big name cases that have been detailed many times, but he does include a few details that I haven't seen in other works on this topic. The problem comes with the style of the book. He is smugly self-confident that he has taken the most appropriate tack - the middle ground, as though it is never possible for one of two competing sides to be completely right (this is in spite of the fact that he was a party to one of the cases detailed here). In order to maintain this image, he has to leave out a lot - such as letting stand all comments that leave the impression that school children have been denied the right to pray in school. He constantly touts how nice these people are, how sincere, and how much they have principles, as if nice people can never be horribly wrong about something, or as if being nice people means everything you ever do is done with total niceness in your heart. The only place he loses that veneer is when talking about plaintiffs Philip Paulson and Michael Newdow - the atheists that brought crucial cases to the Supreme Court. He makes sure to lay every perceived flaw out before the reader in a sort of "I report, you decide" manner. In fact, he apparently regards atheists as being somewhat lesser human beings, though his understanding of the First Amendment means he won't totally reject their right to bring the cases. He continually dismisses them as "only a handful of people" even while recognizing the rights of Jews, Muslims, and other minorities (some of them much smaller than non-believers in number) to have their rights protected in spite of their small numbers. He also leaves no room for the middle ground he seems to propose, since he brands people who want to take the religious symbols out of public spaces and have them displayed in private spaces like homes, churches and businesses (the true middle ground) as the extreme, not recognizing that the true opposite to people who want religious symbols demonstrated everywhere would be those who reject having them seen anywhere. Overall, I think the good of the book does not outweigh the negatives, especially since all of these cases have been discussed in much detail elsewhere. ( )

Excellent book. Irons really lets all sides speak for themselves and provides the necessary background on the supreme court battles in our culture wars. Made the opposing side seem more human to me (although I still fervently disagree with them). Should be read by all parties involved. ( )