New York, Sept 30: Lyle Stuart knows many of the books he publishes are objectionable to the average American, but he still wants people to be able to read how to make bombs and to learn the inner thoughts of a paedophile.
Stuart, 81-year-old president of maverick publisher Barricade Books, is an old hand at testing the limits of free speech and believes people should not be told what they can read.
"The strength of this nation is its First Amendment, its freedom to express all kinds of ideas, and that the public has to make their own determination," Stuart said in an interview at his Fort Lee, New Jersey, office.
Barricade's titles are far from mass-market and bestseller fare. While some have recorded substantial sales from online and mainstream outlets, they remain largely unknown to the general public, and the firm is driven more by principle than profit although it does not disclose financial data.

Among the books published by Barricade is Andrew Macdonald's The Turner Diaries -- an anti-Semitic, anti-black book that is almost a bible among right-wing militant US groups. It is believed to have inspired the bombing of the US federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
Written in 1978, The Turner Diaries is a fictional work structured as a series of diaries recording a modern day revolution against the US government. It includes a plot to blow up an FBI building with a truck laden with TNT and ammonium nitrate fertiliser.
Other titles include Dr Amy Hammel-Zabin's Conversations With a Pedophile and William Powell's The Anarchist Cookbook complete with instructions on how to make bombs and booby traps. The latter, popular on college campuses according to Stuart, comes at a time when post September 11 jitters about bomb attacks are high.

Hammel-Zabin's book about paedophilia offers a close look at how a paedophile stalks and befriends children. "Every family with children should have this book," Stuart said.

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Stuart's free-speech crusade faces obstacles, especially since legislation aimed at thwarting terrorism passed after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States that has been criticised as chipping away at civil liberties.

To Stuart, the USA Patriot Act is the "un-Patriot Act" and his defiant stance and publishing record have won him admirers among civil libertarians and free-speech advocates.

"I think he is doing something very important... My freedom to chose what I want to read is not very valuable if my only 'choice' consists of popular mainstream conventional materials," said Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"My heroes have always been those who are on the front lines of the First Amendment, including librarians and booksellers and people such as Lyle Stuart."
Bureau Report