Banned Books Week 2022: The History of Book Bans

The author trains her attention on American critics, editors, and university professors and administrators who mediated the relationship among the Church, parishioners, and the culture at large.

This expanded edition presents a thorough analysis of the current state of book banning in schools and public libraries, offering ready reference material on major incidents, legal cases, and annotated entries on the most frequently challenged books.

Joseph M. Levine provides a witty and erudite account of one of the most celebrated chapters in English cultural history, the acrimonious quarrel between the "ancients" and the "moderns" which Jonathan Swift dubbed "the Battle of the Books."

This provocative new work examines the years between the Nazi book fires and the publication of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953), a period when book burning captured the popular imagination.

In Burning the Books, Ovenden takes a polemical stance on the social and political importance of the conservation and protection of knowledge, challenging governments in particular, but also society as a whole, to improve public policy and funding for these essential institutions.

The book's main focus is the public political dimension of censorship, in its relation to political authority and political thought, while also reflecting on the porous boundary to literature and other areas such as law and the media.

It is estimated that only a small fraction, less than 1 per cent, of ancient literature has survived to the present day. The role of Christian authorities in the active suppression and destruction of books in Late Antiquity has received surprisingly little sustained consideration by academics.

Between 1933 and 1945 Nazi Germany destroyed an estimated 100 million books throughout occupied Europe, an act inextricably linked with the murder of 6 million Jews.

Peiss tells the story of the men and women who went to Europe to collect and protect books and information and in doing so enriches the debates over the use of data in times of both war and peace.