This book offers a brief overview of book censorship throughout the ages. The chapters offer tidy tidbits about the most frequently banned books in each century, complete with quotations and illustrations. This book also does a good job of documenting the recent (2010-) upswing in book censorship in the United States and worldwide, an interesting if deeply disturbing trend. Overall this is an excellent resource for a basic summary on this topic as well as a useful reading list! ( )

What can you say for a book that, right at the beginning, has chapters titled:

* Pre-1900
* The 19th Century

You're telling me NOT ONE editor or author at DK knows that the 19th century is the 1800s, so the first chapter should be titled "Pre-1800"? Not one?

It does not bode well for the book...

It is a pretty, amuse-bouche of a book, suitable for a quick recap of many "banned" books.

But, it has it's problems.

First, there is a tendency among leftist/liberals to equate BANNING a book, to wit: a government shutting down publication, stopping distribution, and punishing readers and authors, and CURATION, to wit: parents of young children who do not want certain books to be freely available to their children without parental supervision and/or permission. Crazy parents may want to keep books with, say, sexual content out of a middle school library (paid for with THEIR tax dollars) and not want to ban other people, adults, from buying a certain book. There is a difference, but that is often lost on people, on purpose.

Second, there is a tendency by the authors to be dismissive and haughty when religious and/or conservative parents may challenge a book about homosexuality or with sex scenes or the like, but very quickly they gloss over liberal/leftist/wokesters "banning" books for wrongthink or wrongspeech. For instance, it's not conservatives trying to ban Twain's Huckleberry Finn (see p. 42) or Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (see p. 102). On To Kill a Mockingbird from p. 102:

"There are frequent calls, sometimes successful, for its removal from the curriculum for a variety of reasons: the sexual assault; the implication that women lie about being raped, the racist language, including use of the N-word; and its treatment of racism. In recent years, the book has been criticized for its 'White savior' complex, as the plot revolves around a white lawyer helping a Black man. This reason was cited by an Edinburgh school that removed it from its curriculum in 2021. Some critics argue that the book, which is by a white author, should be removed in order to make space for more works by Black writers."

Third, poor DK doesn't realize that it's part of the problem it only obliquely references in the introduction, "Just as insidiously, authors and publishers sometimes censor themselves by not creating or publishing work that might give offense" (p. 7). If you look at the back of the book you see the authors, editors, designers, etc., and this set of folks: "Authenticity Readers." These "authenticity readers" combed the text to remove anything THEY might think is offensive in their wokester brains. Thus the neologism "enslaved person" for "slavery," the fact that offensive words are left unprinted in a book about censorship/banning. Et cetera. Do they not see the ironic hypocrisy?

It reminds me of Bradbury's bit from the coda to Fahrenheit 451: "Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever."

I am sure it was these "authenticity readers" who managed this in the section on Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses: "They were also offended by Rushdie's revival of a discredited tale from early Islamic history..." (p. 144). WHAT? First, Rushdie didn't "revive" anything, it's always been around. Second, "a discredited tale"? Discredited by whom? It is still debated by scholars, with many not discrediting it or calling it a "tale" (in the mocking sense of "fable"). Must not cause offense....

Poor DK, poor mangling of what could have been a good book. ( )

Banned Books looks at controversial classics and modern books alike. This little tome is more important than ever, what with all the crazy conservatives trying to ban all manner of literature from schools.

From classics like The Great Gatsby to modern authors like Phillip Pullman and JK Rowling, banning books isn't a new thing. Some did surprise me, as did the reasoning behind some books. Some reasons seem silly to me today (Catcher in the Rye… *uugghhh*). Others I may choose not to teach, but certainly wouldn't strive for banning, or making a big deal about someone choosing to read for pleasure, even if I wouldn't. The Harry Potter books have sadly fallen into this category for me due to the author's stances on certain things.

Books for high school age kids really shouldn't be banned for reasons such as *gasp* LGBTQ+ representation, or mild sexual situations. Or even more extreme if it's necessary to the story (The Kite Runner). This aren't young kids. They know about sex. And banning books with positive depictions of LGBTQ+ characters denigrates and dismisses an entire subset of the population.

****Many thanks to Netgalley and DK for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. ( )

Banned Books: The World's Mos Controversial Books, Past and Present, from DK Publishing, is an excellent overview of well-known books that have been, and in some cases still are, banned or censored in some places.

Most readers will be familiar with all of these books even if you weren't aware of each one's history. Most, in fact, are frequently part of course study in literature. Each is given a short entry explaining very basically what the book is about and why it was banned (which is heavily dependent also on when and where).

Certainly there could have been more detail on each book, but for the purpose of this book the entries are just about right. Very much more detail and the book becomes unwieldy. Eighty seven books (the Harry Potter series counts as one here) with the details about each would quickly require either fewer books or an encyclopedia size book. Either option would defeat the purpose, which is to shed some light on the number of books that we know and love today that at one time was the target of narrow-minded authorities, whether secular or religious.

This is a nice-looking volume that can serve as a nice introduction when talking to young people about whether censorship is the better option to open debate, or what it says about those wanting to ban books that rather than confront the ideas they want to hide them away. Guess when you know your argument is not valid you seek to control others through other means.

I would recommend this for everyone from a curious teen to someone who just likes to have a handy reference on some of the more popular banned books from the past (and backwoods parts of the present).

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )