From the best-selling author ofThe Working Poor,an impassioned, incisive look at the violations of civil liberties in the United States that have accelerated over the past decade-and their direct impact on our lives. How have our rights to privacy and justice been undermined? What exactly have we lost? Pulitzer Prizewinner David K. Shipler searches for the answers to these questions by examining the historical expansion and contraction of our fundamental rights and, most pointedly, the real-life stories of individual men and women who have suffered. With keen insight and telling detail he describes how the Supreme Courtrs"s constitutional rulings play on the streets as D.C. police officers search for guns in poor African American neighborhoods, how a fruitless search warrant turns the home of a Homeland Security employee upside down, and how the secret surveillance and jailing of an innocent lawyer result from an FBI lab mistake. Each instance-shocking and compelling-is a clear illustration of the risks posed to individual liberties. And, in Shiplerrs"s hands, each serves as a powerful incitement for a retrieval of these precious rights. A brilliant, immeasurably important book for our time.