{"product_id":"what-is-free-speech-1","title":"What Is Free Speech?","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe reinvention of an idea we now take for granted.\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cstrong\u003eWhat Is Free Speech?: The History of a Dangerous Idea\u003c\/strong\u003e by leading intellectual historian \u003cstrong\u003eFara Dabhoiwala\u003c\/strong\u003e traces how a concept once viewed as hazardous and unnatural was transformed into an unalloyed good — with enormous consequences for the world we live in now.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe book moves from \u003cstrong\u003eSumeria and China to seventeenth-century Europe\u003c\/strong\u003e, showing how every premodern society understood that words could destroy lives and unsettle social order — and treated speech regulation as a proper function of government. Only in the early \u003cstrong\u003e1700s\u003c\/strong\u003e did that old order break down, as the freedom to speak as one pleased was reimagined as a defining ideal. Called \u003cstrong\u003e\"a brilliant history of a weaponized mantra\"\u003c\/strong\u003e by The Guardian.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhere the modern argument began.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"W. W. Norton","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47873927971003,"sku":"9780674987319","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0649\/6544\/3771\/files\/436_385c827f-94a4-4053-83ec-554ee8d1924f.jpg?v=1779733323","url":"https:\/\/themodernchemist.com\/products\/what-is-free-speech-1","provider":"The Modern Chemist","version":"1.0","type":"link"}