Rather than abstract philosophical discussion or yet another analysis of legal doctrine, Speech and Silence in American Law seeks to situate speech and silence, locating them in particular circumstances and contexts and asking how context matters in facilitating speech or demanding silence. To understand speech and silence we have to inquire into their social life and examine the occasions and practices that call them forth and that give them meaning. Among the questions addressed in this book are: who is authorized to speak? And what are the conditions that should be attached to the speaking subject? Are there occasions that call for speech and others that demand silence? What is the relationship between the speech act and the speaker? Taking these questions into account helps readers understand what compels speakers and what problems accompany speech without a known speaker, allowing us to assess how silence speaks and how speech renders the silent more knowable.

This work identifies 436 American silent films released between 1909 and 1929 that engaged the issues of militant labor and revolutionary radicalism. It begins with an extended introduction and analytical chapters that investigate the ways in which the American motion picture industry portrayed the interrelationships between labor radicals, exploitative capitalists, socialist idealists and Bolsheviks during this critical twenty-year period. Each entry contains a detailed plot synopsis, citations to primary sources, coding indicating the presence or absence of 14 predominant discernible biases (including anti- and pro-capitalism, socialism, revolution and labor), and subject coding keyed to 64 related terms and concepts (including agitators, Bolshevism, bombs, female radicals, militias, mobs, political refugees, and strikes). These statistical data included in the filmography are presented in a series of charts and are fully integrated into the historical-critical text. Total number and percentage statistics for the instances of these coded biases and traits are given per year, per era, and overall.

‘A darkly entertaining tale about American espionage, set in an era when Washington’s fear and skepticism about the agency resembles our climate today.’ New York Times At the end of World War II, the United States dominated the world militarily, economically, and in moral standing – seen as the victor over tyranny and a champion of freedom. But it was clear – to some – that the Soviet Union was already executing a plan to expand and foment revolution around the world. The American government’s strategy in response relied on the secret efforts of a newly-formed CIA. The Quiet Americans chronicles the exploits of four spies – Michael Burke, a charming former football star fallen on hard times, Frank Wisner, the scion of a wealthy Southern family, Peter Sichel, a sophisticated German Jew who escaped the Nazis, and Edward Lansdale, a brilliant ad executive. The four ran covert operations across the globe, trying to outwit the ruthless KGB in Berlin, parachuting commandos into Eastern Europe, plotting coups, and directing wars against Communist insurgents in Asia. But time and again their efforts went awry, thwarted by a combination of stupidity and ideological rigidity at the highest levels of the government – and more profoundly, the decision to abandon American ideals. By the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union had a stranglehold on Eastern Europe, the US had begun its disastrous intervention in Vietnam, and America, the beacon of democracy, was overthrowing democratically elected governments and earning the hatred of much of the world. All of this culminated in an act of betrayal and cowardice that would lock the Cold War into place for decades to come. Anderson brings to the telling of this story all the narrative brio, deep research, sceptical eye, and lively prose that made Lawrence in Arabia a major international bestseller. The intertwined lives of these men began in a common purpose of defending freedom, but the ravages of the Cold War led them to different fates. Two would quit the CIA in despair, stricken by the moral compromises they had to make; one became the archetype of the duplicitous and destructive American spy; and one would be so heartbroken he would take his own life. Scott Anderson’s The Quiet Americans is the story of these four men. It is also the story of how the United States, at the very pinnacle of its power, managed to permanently damage its moral standing in the world.

The history of Latin American journalism is ultimately the story of a people who have been silenced over the centuries, primarily Native Americans, women, peasants, and the urban poor. This book seeks to correct the record propounded by most English-language surveys of Latin American journalism, which tend to neglect pre-Columbian forms of reporting, the ways in which technology has been used as a tool of colonization, and the Latin American conceptual foundations of a free press. Challenging the conventional notion of a free marketplace of ideas in a region plagued with serious problems of poverty, violence, propaganda, political intolerance, poor ethics, journalism education deficiencies, and media concentration in the hands of an elite, Ferreira debunks the myth of a free press in Latin America. The diffusion of colonial presses in the New World resulted in the imposition of a structural censorship with elements that remain to this day. They include ethnic and gender discrimination, technological elitism, state and religious authoritarianism, and ideological controls. Impoverished, afraid of crime and violence, and without access to an effective democracy, ordinary Latin Americans still live silenced by ruling actors that include a dominant and concentrated media. Thus, not only is the press not free in Latin America, but it is also itself an instrument of oppression.

This book is a cultural-historical (rather than purely linguistic) introduction to American English. The first part consists of a general account of variation in American English. It offers concise but comprehensive coverage of such topics as the history of American English; regional, social and ethnic variation; variation in style (including slang); and British and American differences. The second part of the book puts forward an account of how American English has developed into a dominant variety of the English language. It focuses on the ways in which intellectual traditions such as puritanism and republicanism, in shaping the American world view, have also contributed to the distinctiveness of American English.

Librarians around the country are currently on a battleground, defending their right to purchase and circulate books dealing with issues of race and systemic racism. Despite this work, the library community has often overlooked—even ignored—its own history of White supremacy and deliberate inaction on the part of White librarians and library leadership. Author Wayne A. Wiegand takes a crucial step to amend this historical record. In Silence or Indifference: Racism and Jim Crow Segregated Public School Libraries analyzes and critiques the world of professional librarianship between 1954 and 1974. Wiegand begins by identifying racism in the practice and customs of public school libraries in the years leading up to the Brown v. Board of Education decision. This culture permeated the next two decades, as subsequent Supreme Court decisions led to feeble and mostly unsuccessful attempts to integrate Jim Crow public schools and their libraries. During this same period, the profession was honing its national image as a defender of intellectual freedom, a proponent of the freedom to read, and an opponent of censorship. Still, the community did not take any unified action to support Brown or to visibly oppose racial segregation. As Black school librarians and their Black patrons suffered through the humiliations and hostility of the Jim Crow educational establishment, the American library community remained largely ambivalent and silent. The book brings to light a distressing history that continues to impact the library community, its students, and its patrons. Currently available school library literature skews the historical perspective that informs the present. In Silence or Indifference is the first attempt to establish historical accountability for the systemic racism contemporary school librarianship inherited in the twenty-first century.

At a time of great sacrifice in Canadian history, we are welcomed into the homes, the hearts, and the minds of mothers, sons, fathers, and friends as we follow Syd Smith and his high-school brotherhood of 13 when they answer the call to duty in 1941.

The book recognizes the achievements by a nineteenth-century community of women religious, the Grey Nuns of Lewiston, Maine. The founding of their hospital was significant in its time as the first hospital in that factory city; and is significant today if one desires a more accurate and inclusive history of women and healthcare in America. The fact that this community lived in a hostile, Protestant-dominated, industrial environment while submerged in a French-Canadian Catholic world of ethnicity, tradition and paternalism makes their accomplishments more compelling.