Elmer Gertz recalls his long battle in what legal scholars regard as the second most important libel case in legal history: Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. Gertz's ordeal began in Chicago during the violent peace demonstrations of 1968. A youth, Ronald Nelson, was killed by a Chicago policeman, Richard Nuccio. Gertz represented the Nelson family in civil suits against Nuccio and the Chicago police department. After Nuccio was convicted of murder, the John Birch Society published an article in its journal, American Opinion, claiming that Nuccio was framed by Communists. Gertz was targeted as a prime Communist instigator. After reading and studying the article, Gertz filed suit against Robert Welch, Inc., charging that it had defamed him by publishing highly harmful lies impugning his reputation and patriotism. Gertz writes in detail of his landmark case, which involved two trials, two reviews in the court of appeals, and two battles in the Supreme Court. Although the case was finally decided in April 1981, when a U.S. district court jury awarded him $100,000 compensatory damages and $300,000 punitive damages, Gertz did not receive payment until May 1983, after Robert Welch, Inc., had filed two unsuccessful appeals.

A crucial and compelling account of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the landmark Supreme Court case that redefined libel, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning legal journalist Anthony Lewis. The First Amendment puts it this way: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." Yet, in 1960, a city official in Montgomery, Alabama, sued The New York Times for libel—and was awarded $500,000 by a local jury—because the paper had published an ad critical of Montgomery's brutal response to civil rights protests. The centuries of legal precedent behind the Sullivan case and the U.S. Supreme Court's historic reversal of the original verdict are expertly chronicled in this gripping and wonderfully readable book by the Pulitzer Prize Pulitzer Prize–winning legal journalist Anthony Lewis. It is our best account yet of a case that redefined what newspapers—and ordinary citizens—can print or say.