Instruct: Classify a given Amazon review into positive or negative sentiment.
Query: Fair, Timely, Important, Interesting

Perilous Times is a fascinating account, by Geoffrey R. Stone, of free speech in wartime, that is oddly both often a little frightening and quite hopeful. The six periods on which the author focuses are the sedition act of 1798, the Civil War, the two World Wars, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War. Three of these periods show a carlessness with the First Amendment (1798, World War I, and the Cold War) on the part of national leaders that is balanced with a less hysterical reaction in the other three wartime periods. The author is brilliant in analyzing why this is so and he tells a fascinating story of a progressive, though never inevitable or strictly linear, development of the importance of a free press and a free discourse of ideas, even (perhaps particularly) during times of national crisis. A brilliant, important, truly fascinating tale.