Tues. June 5

 Alan Dershowitz, a shy, retiring lawyer from Cambridge ... No, really, we just wanted to link those words as we're in doubt as they've ever been strung together in such a way. The Dersh - as he's sometimes called in these parts - has defended everyone from John Lennon to Claus von Bulow to O.J. and is, arguably, the best-known attorney in the country. He takes to controversy like a shark to a latex-clad surfer. He often makes us apoplectic - this, even when we agree with him. Which we do here in "Blasphemy: How the Religious Right Is Hijacking the Declaration of Independence." Dersh considers school prayer, faith-based programs, the attempt to bring Church and State closer together - all that stuff. Dershowitz looks at our history and the declaration itself, penned by that Thomas Jefferson fella, and notes there is no relation between "Nature's God" as reffered to in the Declaration and traditional Christian God of Testaments Old and New. Says Sam Harris, author of "The End of Faith": "'Blasphemy' proves that many Christians are as deliberately bewildered about the history of our nation as they are about the evolution of life on this planet. Dershowitz has done a great service in rescuing Jefferson, Adams and other Founding Fathers from the religious delusions of the Christian Right." Dershowitz ambles over from Harvard University, where he is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, to Harvard Book Store Tuesday June 5 at 7 for a discussion and signing. Discussion means you get to speak, too.

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