Banned Books Week®

The American Library Association’s Banned Books Week 2026 will take place from October 4th till October 10th. Librarians have been particularly exposed to this form of prejudice. “Freedom itself is a dangerous way of life, but it is ours” as The Freedom to Read declaration asserted seventy years ago, responding to Senator McCarthy’s efforts. The banning of books seems to have become a right wing habit, but at least in theory it’s an equal-opportunity pastime. I’m not sure we can identify any historical liberal book bans — rather a contradiction in terms — but certainly Mein Kampf was banned for a number of years — in Germany at least. No doubt we’ve all forgotten about the fuss in 2017 over the publication at Simon & Schuster of Milo Yiannopoulos’ book. It prompted me to speculate on the inappropriateness of a publisher’s applying pre-publication censorship. After all, nobody is able to force any publisher to publish any book, and short of legal liabilities, no publisher need withdraw…