Christopher Finan

president, US Booksellers for Free Expression

Chris Finan is president of American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, which was established by the American Booksellers Association in 1990 to defend the First Amendment rights of booksellers and their customers. Mr. Finan has been involved in the fight against censorship for over 25 years. He is the chair of Media Coalition, a trade association that defends the rights of businesses that produce and distribute First Amendment-protected material. He studied American history at Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1992. He is the author of *Alfred E. Smith: The Happy Warrior* (Hill and Wang), a biography of the New York governor who was the first Catholic to run for President. His latest book is *From the Palmer Raids to the PATRIOT Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America* (Beacon Press), the winner of the American Library Associations Eli M. Oboler Award for the best work on intellectual freedom published in 2006 and 2007.