The premise of the book is interesting. The author, a law professor and avid collector, found a letter on some of Thomas Jefferson's views on freedom of speech. Despite the interesting premise, it book itself ends up being fairly unengaging, although it does make some interesting points.

The weakness of the book seems to be that it is trying to do too much in one book, and, as such, ends up diluting the strength of each part. The first part is almost of memoir of Dershowitz's letter collecting hobby. As someone who personally does not see the appeal of collecting, I found this rather dull. He then told the story of discovering the Jefferson letter. This was more interesting.

However, the letter itself is rather short. Only a couple of paragraphs long. The rest of the book is a response to the letter. Since the letter itself is so short, the rest of the book feels stretched. Dershowitz does a good job of pulling in other materials to give more context to the letter and support to his views of it, but still, it feels like he had a strong essay that he expanded into an okay book.

Overall, the book was not a bad read, but I cannot really recommend it either. ( )

This book is a lawyer's take on the First Amendment in an era of terrorism. He writes it on the occasion of purchasing a previously unpublished letter of Jefferson's addressing this issue. The chatty and personal nature of the first chapter (including an extended history of his hobby as a collector) detracts from the book, and can be safely skipped as irrelevant. Otherwise, it is an interesting retrospective: does the First Amendment need amending? can it be adapted to deal with the issues related to speech that advocates violence? It's an excellent introduction to the legal, moral and historical issues surrounding the First Amendment. The reader will learn that it does not give Americans the right to absolute free speech, but rather limits the Federal government from abridging that right. Jefferson believed that states could indeed abridge speech and was the proper venue for such law. A relatively quick read.

I really enjoyed the first act of Mr. Dershowitz's book, where he recounts the story of how he came to possess the Jefferson letter. However, when he begins to dissect the letter, it becomes a bit dry for my taste. If you're a legal scholar you might disagree, but for the rest of us it's something of a chore.

In Dershowitz's defense, the "dry" part of the book is well written and very well argued. That being said, he doesn't make any ground-breaking points.

I'd recommend this book to Constitutional scholars, Jefferson fans and those interested in legal history. Otherwise, you'll probably lose interest about halfway through. ( )