Is Free Speech Under Threat?

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Brought to you by Penguin.

Two leading thinkers present alternative answers to one of the most difficult and divisive questions of our times: Is free speech under threat?

Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America, the leading free expression organisation, argues that alongside the necessary and long-overdue elevation of minority voices in recent years, there has also arisen an uncompromising intolerance – most notably on university campuses and online – that wrongly equates a wide range of offensive speech with violence and seeks to shut it down. This has led to an escalating free speech arms race, from which everyone loses.

Charlotte Lydia Riley, historian of empire and editor of The Free Speech Wars, argues that accusations of cancel culture and defences of free speech are too often disingenuous attempts to fuel a culture war and so inhibit an important realignment in which hateful speech is at last being called out for what it is and the right to free expression is being extended to more people than ever before.

Published in conjunction with Intelligence Squared, the world’s leading curator of debate, this book is part of the THINK AGAIN series: short books that present two expert, contrasting but equally persuasive views in a single volume that can be read from either end.

© Suzanne Nossel and Charlotte Lydia Riley 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2024

Critics Review

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Praise for DARE TO SPEAK: DEFENDING FREE SPEECH FOR ALL by Suzanne Nossel
This brave, wise, succinct book is a must-read for writers, speakers, teachers, journalists, and, well, anyone who talks
Margaret Atwood
An authoritative, essential book
Salman Rushdie
A much needed, cogent and compelling blueprint
Hillary Rodham Clinton
As a prominent defender of outspoken wordsmiths, Suzanne Nossel knows a thing or two about free speech, and she makes a powerful case that freedom of expression is not just compatible but necessary for the advancement of equality and human rights
Steven Pinker
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Praise for IMPERIAL ISLAND: A HISTORY OF EMPIRE IN MODERN BRITAIN by Charlotte Lydia Riley
A masterful, ingeniously written telling of Britain's real history ... Read this incisive and forensic book, and you won't look at Britain in the same way ever again
Owen Jones
A withering indictment of cruel Britannia … a chilling history of institutional and public prejudice … Riley gives injustices that ought to be better known their due
Guardian
A marvellous account of how the empire made modern Britain. With an eye that ranges from popular culture to the highbrow, from high politics to the household, Charlotte Riley's book is a thought-provoking delight that absolutely everyone should read
Stephen Bush
Skilfully, inexorably and powerfully, she builds up a picture that's been hiding in plain sight for far too long
Lucy Worsley

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