Sure, the university’s fearless leader may have seen his salary slip slightly, but PrezBo’s got another trick up his sleeve for the holidays: a new book. Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century will be released by Oxford University Press in December, with Amazon and Barnes and Noble listing the official shipping dates as January 14, 2010.

As can be guessed from the title (no doubt a reference to New York Times Co. v. Sullivan), the book–Bollinger’s fourth on free speech–”explores the troubled history of a free press in America and looks toward the challenges ahead…While protecting the freedom of the press at home remains a crucial task, the next challenge is to help create a global public forum suitable for an increasingly interconnected world.” His publisher even promises the book “will set the agenda for how we think about the press in the twenty-first century.”

Chances at lasting fame aside, the back cover blurbs are suitably laudatory. Anthony Lewis calls the book “a work of vision and provocation,” while even the president of our purple friends to the south, John Sexton, says “Bollinger proves once again he is a leading thinker of the First Amendment.” Okay, so maybe it helps he’s “known Lee for over 30 years,” but that won’t stop us from eagerly awaiting a review copy.