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Many societies have banned certain books. This is a partial list of books which have been banned by some organization at some place and time.

Various scriptures have been banned (and sometimes burned) at several points in history. The Bible, Talmud and the Qur'an have all been subjected to censorship and have been banned in various cities and countries. In Medieval Europe the Catholic Church created a program that lasted until 1948 to deal with dissenting printed opinion; it was called the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Over the years many books based on the scriptures have also been banned, such as Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You, which was banned in Russia for being anti-establishment.

Books that deal with criminal matter have also been subjected to censorship. Small-press titles that have become infamous by being banned include The Anarchist Cookbook, E for Ecstasy, and Hit Man.

In the four-volume series Banned Books published by FactsOnFile in 1998, the volumes were divided by grounds for banning: political, religious, sexual and social. The first three are often cited together as taboo in polite conversation.

Notably, children's books that deal with death or other teenage angst or various crimes, often find themselves banned, perhaps because of parental worries about teenage suicide or copycat crimes. Many publications are targeted on the premise that children would be corrupted by reading them. This fear led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority in 1954.

Banning documentation


ALA_2000 is used to denote books that appear on the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000 list of the American Library Association * in order to save effort in documenting the bannings.

ALA_Radcliffe is used for books on the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century have been the target of ban attempts.*

ST: Subtitle (usually added if it helps the reader to recognize why book was banned)

ISBN provided if no other encyclopedic information is yet available.

The U.S. Customs office has a history of banning books, more so in the early part of the 20th century

Almost any "Young adult" or "Children's book" author runs the risk of being banned if "adult" themes or themes that are not strictly optimistic and mainstream are included in the storyline.

A-B


C-D


E-G


H-L


M-R


S-Z


Banned Books Week


During the last week of September of each year, the ALA celebrates Banned Books Week. Established in 1982, Banned Books Week celebrates freedom of the press and encourages people to read books which have been banned or challenged. For balance, see [http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46476 Banned Books Week: Smoke Screen of Hypocrisy, by Linda Harvey, 23 September 2005.

See also


Further reading


  • 100 Banned Books by Nicholas J. Karolides, Margaret Bald, and Dawn B. Sova ISBN 0-8160-4059-1 (This is an abridged version of the four volume Banned Books series.)

  • 120 Banned Books: Censorship History of World Literature by Nicolas K. Karolides, Margaret Bald & Dawn B. Sova ISBN 0-8160-6043-6

  • Banned Books, 387 BC to 1978 AD by Anne Lyon Haight ISBN 0-8352-1078-2
    • While a bit outdated, this book has very detailed lists - sorted by author - of specific incidents, who was involved, what the outcome was, etc. It also includes chapters on the history of censorship from a legal perspective.

  • Censorship by Gail Blasser Riley. ISBN 0-8160-3373-0
    • Contains references and contact information for organzations that deal with censorship. Also contains a time line of events regarding banned books.

  • Promotional site that lists all of the banned books of the four-volume series (edited by Ken Wachsberger): *

External links


Sorted alphabetically by domain name.

References


Banned books | Lists of books | Lists of controversial books | Censorship | Freedom of expression | Issues in the culture wars

Verbotenes oder indiziertes Medium | Lista de livros censurados

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "List of banned books".

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