On Book Banning
with Ira Wells
Hosted by Adrian Harewood
In Person Streaming Politics Non-Fict History
Beneath the elegant prose of this small volume lies a vast urgency and passion about language, books, and human consciousness. The hot-button political debates—about freedom of thought and the value of open access, and the depredations of governments and activists to control both—are set against a background of deep yearning for connection between minds.”
The freedom to read is under attack. Join critic, essayist, and author Ira Wells for a conversation on his new publication, On Book Banning: Or, How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy.
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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 seem to be 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.
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