YOU CAN'T READ THIS : CENSORSHIP IN AN AGE OF FREEDOM
Nick Cohen
Sold by World of Books Inc, Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.
AbeBooks Seller since 23 March 2026
Used - Soft cover
Condition: Used - Good
Ships within U.S.A.
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Add to basketSold by World of Books Inc, Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.
AbeBooks Seller since 23 March 2026
Condition: Used - Good
Quantity: 2 available
Add to basketWinner of Polemic of the Year at the 2013 Political Book Awards.
Seller Inventory # CIN0007308906G
Winner of Polemic of the Year at the 2013 Political Book Awards.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communism, and the advent of the Web which allowed for even the smallest voice to be heard, everywhere you turned you were told that we were living in an age of unparalleled freedom.
You Can't Read This Book argues that this view is dangerously naive. From the revolution in Iran that wasn't, to the Great Firewall of China and the imposition of super-injunctions from the filthy rich protecting their privacy, the traditional opponents of freedom of speech - religious fanaticism, plutocratic power and dictatorial states - are thriving, and in many respects finding the world a more comfortable place in the early 21st century than they did in the late 20th.
This is not an account of interesting but trivial disputes about freedom of speech: the rights and wrongs of shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre, of playing heavy metal at 3 am in a built-up area or articulating extremist ideas in a school or university. Rather, this is a story that starts with the cataclysmic reaction of the Left and Right to the publication and denunciation of the Satanic Verses in 1988 that saw them jump into bed with radical extremists. It ends at the juncture where even in the transgressive, liberated West, where so much blood had been spilt for Freedom, where rebellion is the conformist style and playing the dissenter the smart career move in the arts and media, you can write a book and end up destroyed or dead.
Nick Cohen is a journalist and commentator for the Observer and Evening Standard. He is also the author of ‘What’s Left’? – the most important and provocative commentaries on how the Left lost its way.
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