About the Author

Timothy Garton Ash is Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford; Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books. He is the winner of the 2017 Charlemagne Prize and has won the Orwell Prize for Journalism.

Reviews

"Admirably clear, . . . wise, up-to-the-minute and wide-ranging. . . . Free Speech encourages us to take a breath, look hard at the facts, and see how well-tried liberal principles can be applied and defended in daunting new circumstances."—Edmund Fawcett, New York Times Book Review
"Particularly timely. . . . Garton Ash argues forcefully that . . . there is an increasing need for freer speech. . . . A powerful, comprehensive book."—Economist
"Timothy Garton Ash rises to the task of directing us how to live civilly in our connected diversity."—John Lloyd, Financial Times
"Illuminating and thought-provoking. . . . [Garton Ash’s] larger project is not merely to defend freedom of expression, but to promote civil, dispassionate discourse, within and across cultures, even about the most divisive and emotive subjects."—Faramerz Dabhoiwala, The Guardian
"A brave and admirable attempt to construct a platform on which more people can find common ground, even if only on how to disagree without killing each other. Whether the ten principles are used or not, they are a considerable achievement."—George Brock, Times Literary Supplement
"Free Speech is a resource, a weapon, an encyclopedia of anecdote, example and exemplum that reaches toward battling restrictions on expression with mountains of data, new ideas, liberating ideas."—Diane Roberts, Prospect
Longlisted for the 2016 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards in the Current Events & Public Affairs category
2016 Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award in the Publishing category
Selected as one of the Best Books of 2016 by The Economist
Won an Honorable Mention in the Government and Politics category for the 2017 American Publishers Awards for Professional & Scholarly Excellence (PROSE)
"A major piece of cultural analysis, sane, witty and urgently important. Timothy Garton Ash exemplifies the 'robust civility' he recommends as an antidote to the pervasive unhappiness, nervousness and incoherence around freedom of speech, rightly seeing the basic challenge as how we create a cultural and moral climate in which proper public argument is possible and human dignity affirmed."—Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and former Archbishop of Canterbury
"Timothy Garton Ash aspires to articulate norms that should govern freedom of communication in a transnational world. His work is original and inspiring. Free Speech is an unfailingly eloquent and learned book that delights as well as instructs."—Robert Post, Dean and Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law, Yale Law School
"There are still countless people risking their lives to defend free speech and struggling to make lonely voices heard in corners around the world where voices are hard to hear. Let us hope that this book will bring confidence and hope to this world-as-city. I believe it will exert great influence."—Murong Xuecun, author of Leave Me Alone: A Novel of Chengdu