AMERICAN HEROES

Eight ease studies and two long biographical profiles introduce real-life teen-agers and adults who have lived the Bill of Rights. The cases involving high-school students feature both popular and unpopular causes, including a school newspaper editor whose editions were confiscated by the principal, a young woman who refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, and a freshman who was stopped from distributing anti-abortion pamphlets. Although each is briefly presented, Hentoff dearly defines the issues, often citing revealing quotations from judicial decisions. Censorship issues are discussed by profiling two librarians, Jeanne Layton of Utah and Kathy Russell of Virginia, both of whom successfully defended their libraries from local censors. In the longer profiles, Hentoff writes with great admiration about folksinger Joan Baez, who has lived her nonviolent beliefs in word and deed, and teacher Adah Mauer, who has spent years trying to abolish corporal punishment in schools. These contemporary portraits will be extremely useful to teachers as discussion starters, bringing alive the dated phrases of the Bill of Rights for 20th-century kids. Index, bibliography.