Book Banning & Burning Throughout History
Authors of banned books have been ostracized, exiled, or even threatened with death. During certain periods, merely possessing a banned book was a crime. Here’s a brief timeline of book bannings, burnings, and other censorship tactics.
Slaughterhouse-Five: Jumbled, Jangled… and Burned.
Kurt Vonnegut's darkly funny anti-war novel has been banned at least eighteen times. Protagonist Billy Pilgrim has not only "come unstuck in time," he's abducted by aliens. But why? What real life scenario does this reflect?
The Scarlet Letter: A – for Adultery, Antinomian, or America Itself?
Nathaniel Hawthorne is renowned for deep symbolism and psychological insight. So, what's The Scarlet Letter really about? It's about more than a misbehaving minister.
The Catcher in the Rye: A Twentieth-century Jeremiad
The Catcher in the Rye is a 20th-century jeremiad. What the heck is that? Read more and find out.
Maus: Why it Should be Unbanned.
Maus' removal from the curriculum of a school district in Tennessee made national headlines. This essay addresses why that decision should be reversed.
Show Me on the Doll Where This Book Hurt You
A poem that addresses not only the limited thinking behind censorship, but also the dangerous implications of the practice. By Daniel W. Wright.
The Lottery: Who’s the Lucky Scapegoat?
The Lottery ends with a famously disturbing plot twist, one that has provoked controversy since the instant it appeared in The New Yorker. What point was Shirley Jackson making?
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: They Even Banned Dorothy?!
It's more than the "girl power" and (ironically) good witches that got it banned. Discover how much more here...
Back to School in Plato’s Republic: Lesson Plan, or Censorship?
We live in a culture spellbound by censorship. And it's increasing at an alarming rate. Like a lot of other topics, Plato has a lot to say on the subject. What is his perspective on the matter, and is it still relevant?
The Giver: A World Without Humanities
The Giver is about Jonas, an eleven-year-old boy who lives in a futuristic society where life appears to be nothing less than idyllic. If everything is so perfect, why has it been one of the most controversial books in American schools since its release in 1993?
Sign up for our newsletter.
And get a “Discover Everything a Book
Has to Offer” packet. They’re both free!
Sign up for our newsletter.
And stay up to date
with new arrivals at
This Book is Banned.com
It’s free!
A library of “unlocked”
books, tools for enhanced
reading, and essays about the
benefits of the Humanities.
Dig in!
Reading can be a skill, or it can be
an art that develops independent
thinking and judgment.
Here are a few tools
to aid you on that journey.
Sometimes that adage doesn’t
mean what our Google-driven
world thinks it means.
Check out a few
unplugged aphorisms here.
As Mary Poppins taught us,
words can be fun. Remember
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?
Well, that’s just a start.
Click here to have a gander.
You’ll get a heads-up about new posts. And, we’ll keep you up to date about the regular additions we make to all the other good stuff that lives on This Book is Banned.com
Get Free Banned Books:
