“In the pages that follow, the reader will be confronted with enormous crimes against the constitutional principle of free speech . . . the result of those crimes, for thousands of Americans, was persecution, imprisonment, sometimes torture and death . . . What Stephen Kohn has done is to document what happened, with the kind of specific detail – names, places, punishments . . . that brings history alive . . . He has been able to do this by an extraordinary feat of research, extracting from a reluctant government the records that are published for the first time in this book . . . With this book [Kohn] is, in a sense, blowing the whistle on a very large wrong, on behalf of a more democratic America.”

Howard Zinn, from the Preface to American Political Prisoners
Author, “A People’s History of the United States
Former Professor Emeritus, Boston University
“Kohn, a noted writer on civil liberties and whistle-blowing legal issues, has provided a graphic information source on how thousands of Americans had their First Amendment rights violated. The tone of this book is decidedly sympathetic with the victims…This is an excellent source for scholars and beginners alike. Recommended for academic and law libraries.”

W.F. Bell, CHOICE

“This compendium is based on examination of previously inaccessible files belonging to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), and other divisions of the Department of Justice. The first part chronicles the history and applications of laws used to imprison anyone solely on the basis of religious or political belief. The second, describe[ing] prison life, [is] based on the actual words of prisoners, their families, guards, doctors and the warden of Leavenworth penitentiary. The third documents the hundreds of union leaders, antiwar activists, socialists, and other dissidents arrested under the sedition acts, including their identities, where they came from, what they believed, length of imprisonment, and [the] type of treatment received in prison.”

The Journal of American History

Winner: Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award
[Note: The Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Awards were an “an annual award for the best scholarship published on the subject of intolerance in the U.S.”]