The Price of Freedom is a collection of essays by B. A. Santamaria, the outstanding, beloved, and well-known lay leader of the National Civic Council, previously known in Australia as the Catholic Social Movement, or simply (and eventually) “the Movement.” This book offers a concentrated study, abstracting from and possessing a somewhat different focus than his overall mid-1980s memoir Against the Tide. Price of Freedom provides a number of specific studies of problems Santamaria encountered during his first few decades at the helm of Australian Social Catholicism, and highlight the difficulties that even then plagued an effective lay social action. Especially relevant is his chapter on the relationship he and his movement developed and attempted to maintain with the Australian hierarchy, and how he overcame obstacles that fell in his path when that relationship became strained.