On Book Banning: Or, How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy

A Finalist for the 2026 Writers' Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing - A Winnipeg Free Press Best Book of 2025

The freedom to read is under attack.

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 are 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.