Indelible Ink: The Trials of John Peter Zenger and the Birth of America's Free Press - Softcover

"[Kluger] brings...vivid storytelling built on exacting research, a knack for animating the context and an exquisite sense of balance that honors this country's essential press freedom without romanticizing its champions." -- Bill Keller - The New York Times Book Review "Vivid and brisk...Kluger's summaries of the Journal's most satirical passages are great fun to read...Fascinating, too, is Kluger's analysis of the rhetorical strategies employed by Morris and Alexander in the Journal." -- The Los Angeles Review of Books "What is so timely about this well-written and thoroughly researched book is its reminder that no civil right extended to the American people is set in stone or inviolable." -- James Srodes - Washington Times "Celebrates the power of free expression...a comprehensive tribute to Zenger's legal battle against censorship and reprisal." -- Starred Review - Publishers Weekly "We've heard of the Salem witch trials. This is the trial from the 1700s you have not heard about. Mega-trial. Think Hamilton meets John Grisham. We have a 1st amendment and we got into the American Revolution because of the explosive things that happened in this book." -- Brad Thor - The Today Show "Event by compelling event, readers follow Zenger through the drama that eventually landed him in jail on libel charges-before a liberty-loving jury freed him with a 1735 verdict signaling a clear American commitment to the unfettered reporting that can check abuse of power. The much-needed prologue to today's headlines." -- Starred Review - Booklist "Kluger raises important questions still resonating today...This thought-provoking account deserves to be read by everyone." -- Starred Review - Library Journal "Enlightening and frightening... A book of American history for all, but lawyers and journalists will especially appreciate it." -- Kirkus Reviews "Beneath WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden, beneath the whole modern concept of a free press, lies the trial of a German-American printer in colonial New York. Richard Kluger's account of the Zenger trial is thoughtful, scrupulously detailed, and utterly relevant." -- Russell Shorto, author of The Island at the Center of the World "Indelible Ink is a triumph...a new and very compelling take on the Zenger case. I found myself glued to Kluger's book and much in agreement with his findings, and he has written it all wonderfully well." -- Stanley N. Katz, author of Newcastle's New York: Anglo-American Politics, 1723-53 and director of Princeton University's Center for Art and Cultural Studies

The liberty of expression has been fixed in the firmament of our social values since our nation's beginning-the United States was the first government to legalize free speech and a free press as fundamental rights. But when the British began colonizing the New World, any words, true or false, thought to disparage the government were judged as criminally subversive. So when in 1733 a small newspaper, the New-York Weekly Journal, printed scathing articles assailing the new British governor, William Cosby, as corrupt and abusive, colonial New York was scandalized. The paper's publisher, John Peter Zenger - only a front man for Cosby's adversaries, New York Supreme Court Chief Justice Lewis Morris and the shrewd attorney James Alexander - became the endeavor's courageous fall guy when Cosby brought the full force of his high office down upon it. Zenger faced a jury on August 4, 1735, in a proceeding matched in importance during the colonial period only by the Salem Witch Trials. In Indelible Ink, acclaimed social historian Richard Kluger re-creates in rich detail this dramatic clash of powerful antagonists that marked the beginning of press freedom in America. Here is an enduring lesson that resounds to this day on the vital importance of free public expression as the underpinning of democracy.