Exclusive Preview: FREE SPEECH HANDBOOK gets a timely paperback edition

23rd St. Books has released an updated paperback edition of Free Speech Handbook: A Practical Framework for Understanding Our Free Speech Protections written by First Amendment lawyer Ian Rosenberg and illustrated by Eisner-nominated artist Mike Cavallaro. In time with its release, The Beat has an exclusive first look.

Free Speech Handbook explores 10 important Supreme Court cases and explains how they impact current affairs.

Here’s the full description:

In Free Speech Handbook, Ian Rosenberg and Mike Cavallaro brilliantly trace this turbulent history across ten seminal Supreme Court cases while drawing parallels with more recent controversies. Rosenberg’s straightforward language combines with Cavallaro’s bold and bright art to create an accessible and engaging crash course on the meaning, reach, and limits of our free speech protections. When first published in 2021, Publishers Weekly said of the book, “This informative and inspiring guide looks past free-speech clichés to home in on how such rights are not chiseled in stone but fought over on an ever-shifting battlefield” in a starred review.  

Below, see an excerpt from the book on Tinker v. Des Moines and how it continues to impact student speech rights.

“As efforts to stifle student protest are currently sweeping the country, now is the ideal time to look back at the story of the first Supreme Court case to recognize that the First Amendment protects student speech,” said Rosenberg.

“In Tinker v. Des Moines, a 13-year-old student named Mary Beth Tinker bravely wore a black armband to school to protest the Vietnam war. As the case reached the Supreme Court in 1968, this excerpt from Free Speech Handbook shows how the Justices’ debate over the issue would lead to a revolution in student speech rights. 

“In this new era of national turmoil over free speech issues, it is no surprise that it sometimes feels like the First Amendment legal ground beneath our feet is shifting in ways we cannot predict,” he continued. “To combat this uncertainty, Free Speech Handbook provides a stabilizing framework for understanding our free speech rights even in unsettling times. Unless we truly know our free speech rights as Americans, they are impossible to fully utilize and defend when threatened.”

Free Speech Handbook is available everywhere books are sold.