D. M. BENNETT:
THE TRUTH SEEKER
Nineteenth Century
America's
Most Controversial
Publisher
and Free-Speech Martyr
Prometheus Books
Roderick Bradford reintroduces a significant
nineteenth-century reformer whom mainstream historians have unfairly neglected. D. M. Bennett was
the most influential publisher during America's Golden Age of freethought. Even more important, through his dogged opposition
to morals crusader Anthony Comstock – and the high price he eventually paid for it – Bennett mounted
a heroic defense of freedom of expression, in the process helping to shape twentieth-century free speech standards in ways
that few appreciate today. Displaying a masterful command of the historical material, Bradford deftly rescues the memory
of D. M. Bennett, truly an American none of us should forget.
~Tom Flynn, editor of Free Inquiry
magazine and author of
The Trouble with Christmas
D. M. Bennett was a courageous and principled 19th century publisher,
social activist and defender of freedom of thought, and Roderick Bradford's absorbing and very readable biography brings him
to life. The book is well researched, effectively using extracts from historical material. Bradford's biography
brings to a modern audience the priceless contribution, made by a remarkable man, to the freedoms that we now generally
take for granted but which continue to be under attack by many overt and covert social forces.
~Naomi Blumensaadt
Theosophy in Australia
March 2008
Rod Bradford's highly readable and engaging book reveals a man who
is strikingly relevant to our times – politically, socially, and intellectually – for today we face
the same sort of intolerance that Bennett did in his day. Comstockery, McCarthyism, and demagoguery are not dead; they
still stalk our society and government at all levels. More than ever, we need the spirit of D. M. Bennett to defend
the liberty on which this country was founded and is based.
~John Algeo, Professor Emeritus,
University of Georgia, and Vice
President, Theosophical Society
Bradford writes with an engaging, natural style that breathes life
again into a man long dead – a man whose name has been effaced not from a granite monument but from the larger monument
of historical awareness. It is actually delightful and surprising that any scholar, no matter how enterprising and conscientious,
could reassemble a nineteenth-century life in such astonishing detail. It is only slight hyperbole to say that Bradford's
work surpasses ordinary biography so greatly that it borders on a resurrection. Readers of American Atheist
will certainly want to invite the resurrected Bennett into their homes for an extended visit. Indeed, they will want
to buy this book for themselves so he can stay with them permanently.
~Frank Zindler, Editor
American Atheist magazine
Understanding the importance of freethought has not had a high priority
among trained academics, but Roderick Bradford, an independent scholar, casts some light into this void. Having written
extensively on the history of disbelief in "revealed religion," Bradford had every qualification to take up the life of DeRobigne
Mortimer Bennett. Bradford's purpose in D. M. Bennett: The Truth Seeker was less to argue a particular
thesis than to call attention to the neglect of freethought in the study of American religion and culture and to place the
neglected record of an important figure before his readers, both a singular example of resistance to contemporary Christian
jihad on secular values. In these, he has succeeded very well.
~Professor Mark A. Lause
Department of History
University of Cincinnati
Even in his death he [Bennett] was controversial – an argument ensuing about the nature of
his monument. The memorial included the words "The Defender of Liberty and its Martyr." This is a fitting epitaph,
and the writer Roderick Bradford has done us a great service bringing Bennett back to life in this book.
~Jim Herrick, Author,
former editor of The
Freethinker and Vice
President of the
National Secular
Society.
