While most studies of the FBI focus on the long tenure of Director J. Edgar Hoover (1924-1972), The Dangers of Dissent shifts the ground to the recent past. The book examines FBI practices in the domestic security field through the prism of "political policing." The monitoring of dissent is exposed, as are the Bureau's controversial "counterintelligence" operations designed to disrupt political activity. This book reveals that attacks on civil liberties focus on a wide range of domestic critics on both the Left and the Right. This book traces the evolution of FBI spying from 1965 to the present through the eyes of those under investigation, as well as through numerous FBI documents, never used before in scholarly writing, that were recently declassified using the Freedom of Information Act or released during litigation (Greenberg v. FBI). Ivan Greenberg considers the diverse ways that government spying has crossed the line between legal intelligence-gathering to criminal action. While a number of studies focus on government policies under George W. Bush's "War on Terror," Greenberg is one of the few to situate the primary role of the FBI as it shaped and was reshaped by the historical context of the new American Surveillance Society.

"Greenberg makes an important contribution to our understanding of the impact of the security state on civil liberties. His book is a passionate account, although not a polemical one, and its urgent tone reminds us that the price of our inattention has often been higher than we wish to admit." - Journal of American History

"The Dangers of Dissent is a well documented and meticulously researched work that deserves the serious attention of social scientists of all disciplines and anyone concerned with the growth and impact of the surveillance state on democracy in America." - Logos: A Journal of Modern Society & Culture

"Ivan Greenberg's The Dangers of Dissent provides one of the only historical surveys of FBI political spying after the death of its longtime Director, J. Edgar Hoover, in 1972." - Left History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Historical Inquiry & Debate

"Ivan Greenberg's The Dangers of Dissent provides one of the only historical surveys of FBI political spying after the death of its longtime director, J. Edgar Hoover, in 1972. ... "The heart of this book ... is based on research in archival materials or materials obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that have rarely, if ever, been accessed by researchers." ... As a result [the] government documents provide a basis to not just study government repression, but to recover part of the history of those movements that government agencies sought to suppress. ... The Dangers of Dissent promises a different approach to using government documents to narrate the history of surveillance programs." - Left History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Historical Inquiry & Debate