Provides good summaries of the literature and their censorship histories. ( )

Very interesting. A lot of the situations would not have occurred to me, and I am thankful that my own parents were never crazy enough to challenge any of the books I read due to my sensitive nature. A lot of the books are banned or censored and were expected from my end since I had read a few of them and knew of the offending passages.

Some of them are offensive because it depicts women thinking, some are offensive because of language and still others are offensive because of sexual situations. Considering all this garbage of censorship and bowdlerization, I am surprised that some of Shakespeare was never formally opposed. Although, given the fact that there are 120 of them in here, it could have been challenged and I forgot. I mean, Oliver Twist by Dickens is in there because of how it depicts Jews in the 1830s. No seriously, instead of using it as a bridge to teach people how things were in the 1830s, they decide all out to go and try to ban it because it hurts their widdle feelings. Yeah, that isn't a typo, I was using baby talk to mock people that would consider their feelings hurt by a book writing about things that seriously happened. Not that Oliver Twist was real or true or anything, but the depiction of how Jews were perceived is valid.

Some other books were challenged because it made people "uncomfortable." For instance, To Kill a Mockingbird was challenged because it contains the word "nigger." I guess I can understand wanting to defend your child from the truth that such words were used back then to refer to a group of people, namely black people, but can't we move to discuss it rather than try to stamp it out?

One book I am surprised about is The Holy Bible. Not because it was included at all but because of the reason it was included. It wasn't because of the horrible things that happened in it or the sex scenes or anything like that, it was because of the Roman Catholic Church opposing their own power being challenged. See, back in the fourth century, some Saint translated the Bible into Vulgate Latin from it's Greek and Hebrew roots. The Roman Catholic Church(called the RCC from now on if I need to) decided that it was wrong to allow common people to be able to read the Bible in their own local language and called the Vulgate Latin text the only true bible. The RCC bitterly defended this right by killing the translators of the Bible under charges of Heresy. However, we all know how that turned out with the Schisms after the 95 theses of Martin Luther.

Censorship and bowdlerization are things that are unforgivable to me because they prevent the free exchange of ideas and the benefits of a democratic society. All this book really served to do was expand my own reading list, though it was written pretty well. It also includes further reading for each book mentioned to find out the particulars of why it was challenged. ( )

Interesting reasons for banning books. I enjoyed this book because it included books from history; one from Confucius and two from Thomas Paine. The list included books I was familiar with, some I wasn't familiar with and some that completely baffled me as to why they were banned and made me wonder if the complainers had even read the book. ( )

I would wish for every high school kid out there to buy this book and look for the literature they've been told they can't read. This would surely be a good way to stick it to the man for the shameful, blatant censorship we place on our schools and libraries. This book is a good indication of how petty and outrageous people can be when it comes to the written word.

This book contains a wonderful list of books banned for social and religious reasons. Fully detailed, it summarizes each book mentioned. Some books I'd never heard of, but I made a special point to buy them. I hope this was the intention of Karolides. If not, oh, well!

Fun! Fun! Fun! ( )

This is one of the more complete books on censorship I've read. Rather than just examining books that have been banned by schools or public libraries, the author looks at a long history of book bannings. These books are separated by catageories: books banned for political, religious, sexual, or social grounds. It encompasses texts from the Captain Underpants series to The Prince. While it does focus more on contemporary literature than classical literature, this is one of the book's strengths. Each of the 120 books is summarized, then a brief history of the banning is examined. Of course, there are many titles that have faced banning and challenges that are not included in this book (most notable, to me, is the absence of A Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood, which is often challenged and outright banned), but there are also numerous titles that I haven't seen in other censorship books. ( )