Geoffrey Stone's Perilous Times incisively investigates how the First Amendment and other civil liberties have been compromised in America during wartime. Stone delineates the consistent suppression of free speech in six historical periods from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the Vietnam War, and ends with a coda that examines the state of civil liberties in the Bush era.
With the Denver Post being denied access to an Army base in retaliation for a story (the Army later changed its mind), with the Baltimore Sun suing for the ability to interview Maryland state government employees, with editors apologizing for offending their sensitive readers, when even a leading public radio station in a liberal college town is cowed by the FCC, it might not be stretching things to talk about a perilous trend.
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