“HOW COULD WE HAVE LET THIS HAPPEN”? As the government rolled out its domestic security apparatus after 9/11, I began thinking about historical lessons. I was struck by how much these new security manifestations echoed the past, specifically World War II.

DO WE PAY TOO MUCH ATTENTION TO HISTORY? Many writers and commentators have stated the obvious: history repeats itself, or nearly so. But how, specifically? Policymakers, the media, and the public often embrace simplistic or muddled historical lessons, and each manipulates them to affirm their assumptions.

"Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom's first principles." —Justice Anthony Kennedy

Homeland Insecurity is the book I always intended to write. It emphasizes the influence of historical precedent on domestic security practices, and the contest between security and the Constitution that is the heart of the story. I observe the impact on detainees and their families of profiling, FBI bungling, military commissions, secret arrests, suspension of due process and habeas corpus, deportation, extraordinary rendition, and second-class citizenship.

CAN IT HAPPEN AGAIN? The answer to that question may be the ultimate lesson of this tragic episode.

Critics praised Stephen Fox's America's Invisible Gulag as "must reading for all concerned about a repetition and erosion of civil liberties." Now, the award-winning author presents FEAR ITSELF (2007 ed.), a revised and expanded edition of the original, including new chapters on the role of German spies at Pearl Harbor and the forced deportation of Germans from Latin America.

Encouraged by President Franklin Roosevelt, who had warned earlier against giving in to fear, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI rounded up nearly 11,000 people of German ancestry, including Jewish refugees from occupied Europe and over 4,000 residents of Latin America.

Weaving together first-person interviews and government records in this unique study, Fox relates the inside story of internment and exclusion, and suggests answers to many key questions. Among them: What methods did the Justice Department and FBI employ? Why were some Germans nabbed but not others? Why were Jewish refugees and Latin Germans included? Why did internments continue for four years after the end of the war?

"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth—more than ruin—more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit." —Bertrand Russell

"BRAVISSIMO!" - Andrew F. Rolle, author of "The Italian Americans: Troubled Roots" and "The Immigrant Upraised"

UNCIVIL LIBERTIES powerfully demonstrates oral history's ability to challenge common assumptions. While the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II has been extensively reported, few are aware that the federal government also enacted a program that forced thousands of West Coast Italian and German aliens and their families to leave their homes and jobs. Other Italians, including American citizens whose loyalty was deemed doubtful, were interned or excluded without due process.

"I tell you it was a crazy thing. Whoever thought up that law had screws loose someplace." —Mary Tolomei

In addition to extensive interviews, the book relies on government documents and newspaper accounts to reveal this little-known chapter in American history. The painful, long-suppressed memories elicited in these interviews serve as a reminder of the fragility of the civil liberties of all people in a time of national crisis.

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