Winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. J. M. Coetzee presents a coherent, unorthodox analysis of censorship from the perspective of one who has lived and worked under its shadow. The essays collected here attempt to understand the passion that plays itself out in acts of silencing and censoring. He argues that a destructive dynamic of belligerence and escalation tends to overtake the rivals in any field ruled by censorship. From Osip Mandelstam...

During World War II, the civilian Office of Censorship supervised a huge and surprisingly successful program of news management: the voluntary self-censorship of the American press. In January 1942, censorship codebooks were distributed to all American newspapers, magazines, and radio stations with the request that journalists adhere to the guidelines within. Remarkably, over the course of the war no print journalist, and only one radio journalist,...

"A fascinating narrative of life in communist Romania, and a thought-provoking meditation on the nature of literature and censorship. The Censor's Notebook opens with an exchange of letters between "Liliana Corobca" and Emilia Codrescu, long the female chief of the Secret Documents Office in Romania's feared State Directorate of Media and Printing-the government branch responsible for Censorship. Codrescu had been responsible for the burning and shredding...

In 2022, when small-town librarian Amanda Jones 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, and days later, she woke up to a nightmare that is still ongoing. She has been called a groomer, faced death threats, and more, but she wouldn't give up without a fight: she sued her harassers for defamation and urged others to join her in the resistance. Mapping...

The flow of information through our modern digital world has led to many new issues and controversies. Book Banning and Other Forms of Censorship examines how and why schools, special-interest groups, and governments attempt to suppress information in print and online.

If you're an actress or a coed just trying to do a man-size job, a yes-man who turns a deaf ear to some sob sister, an heiress aboard her yacht, or a bookworm enjoying a boy's night out, Diane Ravitch's internationally acclaimed The Language Police has bad news for you: Erase those words from your vocabulary! Textbook publishers and state education agencies have sought to root out racist, sexist, and elitist language in classroom and library materials....

When the rebels are captured Letta goes on the run, still striving to preserve language while the vicious new ruler of Ark plans to eliminate it once and for all.

After her principal bans a number of books from the school library, bibliophile student Clara joins forces with her friends to start an underground library.

In a society in which books are outlawed, Montag, a regimented fireman in charge of burning the forbidden volumes, meets a revolutionary school teacher who dares to read. Suddenly he finds himself a hunted fugitive, forced to choose not only between two women, but between personal safety and intellectual freedom.

In this book, the author, a journalist and social commentator shows that by falling for the supposedly democratizing nature of the Internet, Western do-gooders may have missed how it also entrenches dictators, threatens dissidents, and makes it harder, not easier, to promote democracy.