FREEDOM TO READ ADULT READING LIST
That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America by Amanda Jones
One of the things small town librarian Amanda Jones values most about books is how they can affirm a young person's sense of self. So in 2022, when she caught wind of a local public hearing that would discuss "book content," she knew what was at stake. She spoke out that night at the meeting, a decision that would make her a target for extremists using book-banning campaigns in their own crusade. But Amanda Jones wouldn't give up without a fight, in ‘That Librarian’ she tells her story.
Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future by Jason Stanley
In authoritarian countries, critical examination of those nations' history and traditions is discouraged if not an outright danger to those who do it. And it is no accident that local and global institutions of education have become a battleground, where learning and efforts to upend a hierarchal status quo can be put to end by coercion and threats of violence. Democracies entrust schools and universities to preserve a common memory of positive change, generated by protests, social movements, and rebellions. In Erasing History, Yale professor of philosophy Jason Stanley exposes the true danger of authoritarian attacks on education, identifies their key tactics and funders, and traces their intellectual roots.
The ABA Right to Read Handbook: Fighting Book Bans and Why It Matters by American Booksellers Association
The ABA Right to Read Handbook: A Reader's Guide to Fighting Book Bans will provide a comprehensive guide to resisting the epidemic of book censorship through local organizing and engaged citizenship. The Handbook is designed for the potential activist who may only have a few hours to spare each month. It identifies the causes, actors, motivations, and strategies of groups attempting to ban books across the country. It offers step-by-step guides for voting in a school board election, understanding a school board's policies, contacting elected officials, and more. It features interviews with free expression advocates and state-by-state profiles of local advocacy organizations. Finally, the content is organized into a playbook that will allow concerned readers to begin defending the right to read as soon as book bans arrive in their community.
Banned Books: The World's Most Controversial Books, Past and Present by DK
Censorship of one form or another has existed almost as long as the written word, while definitions of what is deemed "acceptable" in published works have shifted over the centuries, and from culture to culture. Banned Books explores why some of the world’s most important literary classics and seminal non-fiction titles were once deemed too controversial for the public to read – whether for challenging racial or sexual norms, satirizing public figures, or simply being deemed unfit for young readers. From the banning of All Quiet on the Western Front and the repeated suppression of On the Origin of the Species, to 1984, Fahrenheit 45, Catcher in the Rye and Huckleberry Fin, this must-have volume examines the astonishing role that some banned books have played in changing history.
Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge by Richard Ovenden
Libraries have been attacked since ancient times but they have been especially threatened in the modern era, through war as well as willful neglect. Burning the Books describes the deliberate destruction of the knowledge safeguarded in libraries from Alexandria to Sarajevo, from smashed Assyrian tablets to the torching of the Library of Congress. The director of the world-famous Bodleian Libraries, Richard Ovenden, captures the political, religious, and cultural motivations behind these acts. He also shines a light on the librarians and archivists preserving history and memory, often risking their lives in the process.
Orwell's Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the Twenty-First Century by Laura Beers
George Orwell dedicated his career to exposing social injustice and political duplicity, urging his readers to face hard truths about Western society and politics. Now, the uncanny parallels between the interwar era and our own―rising inequality, censorship, and challenges to traditional social hierarchies―make his writing even more of the moment
On Censorship: A Public Librarian Examines Cancel Culture in the Us by James LaRue
In America today, more books are being banned than ever before. This censorship is part of a larger assault on such American institutions as schools, public libraries, and universities. In On Censorship: A Public Librarian Examines Cancel Culture in the US, respected long-time public librarian James LaRue issues a balanced and reasonable call to action for all citizens.
The Education Wars: A Citizen's Guide and Defense Manual by Jennifer C. Berkshire & Jack Schneider
Culture wars have engulfed our schools. Extremist groups are seeking to ban books, limit what educators can teach, and threaten the very foundations of public education. What’s behind these efforts? Why are our schools suddenly so vulnerable? And how can the millions of Americans who love their public schools fight back? In this concise, hard-hitting guide, journalist Jennifer C. Berkshire and education scholar Jack Schneider answer these questions and chart a way forward.
Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times by Azar Nafisi
What is the role of literature in an era when one political party wages continual war on writers and the press? What is the connection between political strife in our daily lives, and the way we meet our enemies on the page in fiction? How can literature, through its free exchange, affect politics? In this galvanizing guide to literature as resistance, Nafisi seeks to answer these questions.
School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics, and the Battle for Public Education by Laura Pappano
An investigative study of the far-right’s attack on education and an on-the-ground look at the parent activist battle, on either side of the debate, to control the future of public schools. In School Moms, journalist Laura Pappano explores the on-the-ground story of how public schools across the country have become ground zero in a cultural and political war as the far-right have made efforts to seek power over school boards.
They Came for the Schools: One Town's Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America's Classrooms by Mike Hixenbaugh
The urgent, revelatory story of how a school board win for the conservative right in one Texas suburb inspired a Christian nationalist campaign now threatening to undermine public education in America. They Came for the Schools pulls back the curtain on the powerful forces driving this crusade to ban books, rewrite curricula, limit rights for minority and LGBTQ students—and, most importantly, to win what Hixenbaugh’s deeply informed reporting convinces is the holy grail among those seeking to impose biblical values on American society: school privatization, one school board and one legal battle at a time.
The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives by Adam Smyth
Books tell all kinds of stories—romances, tragedies, comedies—but if we learn to read the signs correctly, they can tell us the story of their own making too. The Book-Makers offers a new way into the story of Western culture’s most important object, the book, through dynamic portraits of eighteen individuals who helped to define it.
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie
On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black—black clothes, black mask—rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are. Knife is Rushdie at the peak of his powers, writing with urgency, with gravity, with unflinching honesty. It is also a deeply moving reminder of literature’s capacity to make sense of the unthinkable, an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again.