THE RIGHT TO BE INFORMED

No area of law is less satisfactory than this one,"" according to legal scholar Paul Freund, and just as the courts have had trouble defining obscenity--resorting to such equally ephemeral concepts as prurient interest and community standards--so authors find the subject difficult to treat impartially. Snyder's survey has the virtue of fair-mindedness. If he offers no new insights or particularly vigorous arguments for either side, he sheds some light on the gray areas (such as the subtle, sometimes indiscernible, differences between book selection and library censorship) and he gives a hearing to views that conflict with his own--the community pressure to ban textbooks in West Virginia or those who see journalist ""shield laws"" as a form of media irresponsibility. An improvement over the Hoyts' shrill Censorship in America (1971).