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That book is dangerous! : how moral panic, social media, and the culture wars are remaking publishing / by Szetela, Adam,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.An alarming exposé of the new challenges to literary freedom in the age of social media -- when anyone with an identity and an internet connection can be a censor. In That Book Is Dangerous!, Adam Szetela investigates how well-intentioned and often successful efforts to diversify American literature have also produced serious problems for literary freedom. Although progressives are correct to be focused on right-wing attempts at legislative censorship, Szetela argues for attention to the ways that left-wing censorship controls speech within the publishing industry itself. The author draws on interviews with presidents and vice presidents at the Big Five publishers, literary agents at the most prestigious agencies, award-winning authors, editors, marketers, sensitivity readers, and other industry professionals to examine the new publishing landscape. What he finds is unsettling: mandatory sensitivity reads; morality clauses in author contracts; even censorship of "dangerous" books in the name of antiracism, feminism, and other forms of social justice. These changes to acquisition practices, editing policies, and other aspects of literary culture are a direct outgrowth of the culture of public outcries on X, Goodreads, Change.org, and other online platforms, where users accuse authors -- justifiably or not -- of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other transgressions. But rather than genuinely address the economic inequities of literary production, this current moral crusade over literature serves only to entrench the status quo. "While the right is remaking the world in its image," he writes, "the left is standing in a circular firing squad." Compellingly argued and incisively written, the book is a much-needed wake-up call for anyone who cares about reading, writing, and the publication of books -- as well as the generations of young readers we are raising.
Subjects: Cancel culture; Censorship in literature; Culture conflict; Moral panics; Political correctness; Publishers and publishing; Social media;

Read dangerously : the subversive power of literature in troubled times / by Nafisi, Azar,author.;
Includes bibliographical references.Drawing on her experiences as a woman and voracious reader in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a multi-award-winning New York Times best-selling author explores the most probing questions of our time, arming readers with a resistance reading list that includes Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin, and Margaret Atwood.
Subjects: Essays.; Books and reading; Books and reading; Censorship.; Fiction; Politics and literature.; Literature and society.; Literature;

Banned books for kids : reading lists and activities for teaching kids to read censored literature / by Scales, Pat R.,author.; Blume, Judy,writer of foreword.; American Library Association,issuing body.;
Includes bibliographical references."In our polarized environment, the censorship and outright banning of children's books that some people deem to be controversial or objectionable remains a major concern for schools, libraries, and communities across the United States. Intellectual freedom champion, the American Library Association, created Teaching Banned Books to Kids, a guide that includes both contemporary books that have been banned and classic literature that continues to be under attack for political and/or religious reasons. Parents, school and public librarians, library and information sciences students, and classroom educators will find the assistance and support they need to defend these challenged books with an informed response while ensuring access to young book lovers"--
Subjects: Challenged books; Children's libraries; Children's literature; Children's stories, American; Children; Freedom of speech; Prohibited books; Teenagers; Young adult literature; Young adults' libraries;

On book banning / by Wells, Ira,1981-author.;
Includes bibliographical references."A lively, accessible survey of literary censorship through the ages. The freedom to read is under attack. There are, today, more efforts to ban books from libraries than ever before. The supposed "dangers" posed by books including The Handmaid's Tale, Gender Queer, Huckleberry Finn, and the works of Dr. Seuss ... leading children down a path of sexual deviance, or harming them with racist language or non-inclusive narratives ... fuel the puritanical zeal of De Santis Republicans and progressive educators alike. On Book Banning argues that today's culture warriors proceed from a misunderstanding of literature as instrumental to the pursuit of their ideological agendas. In treating libraries as sites of contagion and exposure, censors are warping our children's relationship with literature and teaching them that the solution to opposing viewpoints is cancellation or outright expurgation. On Book Banning provides a lively, accessible survey of literary censorship through the ages ... from the destruction of libraries in ancient Rome, to the Catholic Church's attempts to tamp down religious dissent and scientific innovation, to state-sponsored efforts to suppress LGBTQ literature in the 1980s and beyond. Throughout, Ira Wells demonstrates how today's book bans stem from the ineradicable human impulse toward social control. In a whistle-stop tour of landmark legal cases, literary controversies, and philosophical arguments, we discover that the freedom to read and publish is the aberration in human history, and that censorship and restriction have been the rule. At a moment in which our democratic institutions are buckling under the stress of polarization, On Book Banning is both rallying cry and guide to resistance for those who reject the conflation of art and propaganda, for whom books remain sacred vessels of our shared humanity, and who will always insist upon reading for ourselves."--
Subjects: Censorship.;

Those who should be seized should be seized : China's relentless persecution of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities / by Beck, John,author.;
A shocking, on-the-ground investigation of the Chinese government's brutal oppression of its Muslim citizens -- the Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and others -- as told by the victims. Award-winning journalist John Beck recounts China's persecution of the predominantly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang and its relentless pursuit of the few who escaped beyond its borders. Through intertwined literary narratives combined with snippets of original source material, including official directives and speeches, he pieces together the individual stories of what consecutive American administrations have described as genocide. The narrative moves from China to Kazakhstan, Turkey and the US, incorporating the tensions, discrimination, and occasional violence that characterized life in Xinjiang for decades. But when Xi Jinping is appointed President in 2013, the creeping repression quickly escalates into a crackdown of unprecedented scope and severity. Beck follows four characters: a Kazakh writer and an Uyghur nurse who survived re-education camps before ultimately escaping abroad, a human rights advocate involved in securing their release, and an inadvertent exile spied on by Chinese authorities as his family back home was used as leverage against him. Through their stories, the book explores identity, dehumanization, and censorship, the force of literature in dark times, and an all-pervasive apparatus of repression able to exist within miles of the White House.
Subjects: Ethnic conflict; Genocide; Human rights; Kazakhs; Kazakhs; Kazakhs; Minorities; Political persecution; Uighur (Turkic people); Uighur (Turkic people); Uighur (Turkic people);

Banned Together. by Way, Kate,film director.; Wiggin, Tom,film director.; Ibram X. Kendi, Dr.,actor.; Raskin, Jamie,actor.; Picoult, Jodi,actor.; Dawson, Juno,actor.; Kanopy Production (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, Jamie Raskin, Jodi Picoult, Juno DawsonOriginally produced by Kanopy Production in 2025.A diverse cast of visionary teenagers, stirring public protests, private threats, criminal charges, and drama-filled school board meetings: this is the explosive world of BANNED TOGETHER. The film pulls back the curtain on two of the most controversial issues in America today: book bans and curriculum censorship in public schools. BANNED TOGETHER follows three students as they fight to reinstate 97 books suddenly pulled from their school libraries. As they evolve from local to national activists, they meet with banned authors, politicians, and the major players protecting the First Amendment of our Constitution. Woven throughout the story about the student activists include Congressman Jamie Raskin; bestselling and banned authors like Juno Dawson, Jodi Picoult, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, Erika L. Sánchez, and Ellen Hopkins; First Amendment warriors like Jonathan Friedman from PEN America and Deborah Caldwell-Stone from the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom; Prof. Justin Hansford, the Executive Director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University School of Law; Olivia Little, a senior investigative researcher from Media Matters for America who's done in-depth reporting about Moms for Liberty since early 2021; organizations fighting on the front lines in Florida; Maurice Cunningham, author of "Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization"; and IL Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias who wrote the first anti-book-ban legislation in the country… to name just a few!Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Documentary films.; Literature.; Arts.; Social sciences.; Education.; Sociology.; Documentary films.; Educational films.; Artists.; Students.; Teachers.; Social justice.; United States.; Books.; Art and architecture.;

On Book Banning Or, How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy [electronic resource] : by Wells, Ira.aut; CloudLibrary;
The freedom to read is under attack. From the destruction of libraries in ancient Rome to today’s state-sponsored efforts to suppress LGBTQ+ literature, book bans arise from the impulse toward social control. In a survey of legal cases, literary controversies, and philosophical arguments, Ira Wells illustrates the historical opposition to the freedom to read and argues that today’s conservatives and progressives alike are warping our children’s relationship with literature and teaching them that the solution to opposing viewpoints is outright expurgation. At a moment in which our democratic institutions are buckling under the stress of polarization, On Book Banning is both rallying cry and guide to resistance for those who will always insist upon reading for themselves.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Books & Reading; Censorship; Civilization; Essays;
© 2025., Biblioasis,

The CIA book club : the secret mission to win the Cold War with forbidden literature / by English, Charlie,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."For almost five decades after the Second World War, the Iron Curtain divided Europe, standing as the longest and most heavily guarded border on earth. With the risk of nuclear annihilation too high for physical combat, conflict was reserved for the psychological sphere. No one understood this battle of hearts, minds, and intellects more clearly than Bucharest-born George Minden, the head of a covert intelligence operation known as the "CIA books program." This initiative aimed to win the Cold War with literature: to undermine the censorship of the Soviet bloc and inspire revolt by offering different visions of thought and culture to the people. From its Manhattan headquarters, Minden's global CIA "book club" would infiltrate millions of banned titles into the Eastern Bloc, written by a vast and eclectic list of authors. Volumes were smuggled on trucks and aboard yachts, dropped from balloons, and hidden in the luggage of hundreds of thousands of individual travelers. Once inside Soviet bloc, each book would circulate secretly among dozens of like-minded readers, quietly turning them into dissidents. Soon, underground print shops began to reproduce the books, too. By the late 1980s, illicit literature in Poland was so pervasive that the system of communist censorship broke down, and the Iron Curtain soon followed. Former head of international news at the Guardian, Charlie English is the first to uncover this true story of Cold War spy craft, smuggling and secret printing operations, highlighting the work of a handful of extraordinary people who risked their lives to stand up to the intellectual strait-jacket Stalin created. People like Miroslaw Chojecki, an underground Polish publisher who endured beatings, force-feeding and exile in service of this mission and Minden, the CIA's mastermind, who didn't waver in his belief that truth, culture, and diversity of thought could help free the "captive nations" of Eastern Europe. This is a story about the power of the printed word as a means of resistance and liberation. Books, it shows, can set you free"--
Subjects: United States. Central Intelligence Agency; Books and reading; Cold War; Information warfare; Information warfare; Publishers and publishing;

Magnificent rebel : Nancy Cunard in Jazz Age Paris / by De Courcy, Anne,author.; container of (work):De Courcy, Anne.Five love affairs and a friendship.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Anne de Courcy, the author of Husband Hunters and Chanel's Riviera, examines the controversial life of legendary beauty, writer and rich girl Nancy Cunard during her thirteen years in Jazz-Age Paris. Paris in the 1920s was bursting with talent in the worlds of art, design and literature. The city was at the forefront of everything new and exciting; there was no censorship; life and love were there for the taking. At its center was the gorgeous, seductive English socialite Nancy Cunard, scion of the famous shipping line. Her lovers were legion, but this book focuses on five of the most significant and a lifelong friendship. Her affairs with acclaimed writers Ezra Pound, Aldous Huxley, Michael Arlen and Louis Aragon were passionate and tempestuous, as was her romance with black jazz pianist Henry Crowder. Her friendship with the famous Irish novelist George Moore, her mother's lover and a man falsely rumored to be Nancy's father, was the longest-lasting of her life. Cunard's early years were ones of great wealth but also emotional deprivation. Her mother Lady Cunard, the American heiress Maud Alice Burke (who later changed her name to Emerald) became a reigning London hostess; Nancy, from an early age, was given to promiscuity and heavy drinking and preferred a life in the arts to one in the social sphere into which she had been born. Highly intelligent, a gifted poet and widely read, she founded a small press that published Samuel Beckett among others. A muse to many, she was also a courageous crusader against racism and fascism. She left Paris in 1933, at the end of its most glittering years and remained unafraid to live life on the edge until her death in 1965. Magnificent Rebel is a nuanced portrait of a complex woman, set against the backdrop of the City of Light during one of its most important and fascinating decades"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Cunard, Nancy, 1896-1965; Authors, English; Publishers and publishing; Women journalists; Women political activists;

Languages of truth : essays 2003-2020 / by Rushdie, Salman,author.;
"Salman Rushdie is celebrated as a storyteller of the highest order, illuminating deep truths about our society and culture through his gorgeous, often searing, prose. Now, in his latest collection of nonfiction, he brings together insightful and inspiring essays, criticism, and speeches that focus on his relationship with the written word, and solidify his place as one of the most original thinkers of our time. Gathering pieces written between 2003 and 2019, Languages of Truth chronicles Rushdie's own intellectual engagement with a period of momentous cultural shifts. Immersing the reader in a wide variety of subjects, he delves into the nature of storytelling as a deeply human need, and what emerges is, in myriad ways, a love letter to literature itself. Rushdie explores what the work of authors from Shakespeare and Cervantes to Samuel Beckett, Eudora Welty, and Toni Morrison mean to him, often by telling vivid, sometimes humorous stories of his own personal encounters with them, whether on the page or in person. He delves deeper than ever before into the nature of "truth," revels in the vibrant malleability of language, and the creative lines that can join art and life, and he looks anew at migration, multiculturalism and censorship. The ideas, true stories and arguments presented here are at once revelatory, funny and eye-opening, enlivened on every page by Rushdie's signature wit and dazzling voice, making this volume a genuine pleasure to read"--
Subjects: Essays.;