Book Banning in 21st-Century America

Emily Knox's book has become essential for understanding the evolving landscape of book challenges, a landscape that now includes higher education and private business. While the core justifications for restricting access remain consistent, in this edition, Knox illuminates how today's challengers increasingly target not just individual titles but the very institutions that house them, and the cultural contexts they reflect. By analyzing the challenger’s discourse within theoretical frameworks, Knox reveals both the continuity in censorship arguments and the fundamental shift in how these challenges thrive in our present-day. This work provides crucial insights for a profession facing unprecedented institutional and cultural attacks, offering both scholarly depth and practical understanding for information professionals navigating a hostile new terrain. -- Lucy Santos Green, Professor and Director, School of Library and Information Science, The University of Iowa Refreshingly not polarizing! Knox offers a good-faith book examining the practice of reading and real-world censorship. It’s expertly researched and painstakingly written with fairness top of mind. The audience for this disciplined author is from all sides! -- Toni Samek, Scholar-in-residence, Centre for Free Expression, Toronto Metropolitan University Knox’s book is a masterful, insightful analysis of the motivations behind book banning, using challengers’ own words. With this context, censorship opponents can better advocate for libraries and schools. -- Shannon M. Oltmann, PhD, Associate Dean and Director, School of Information Sciences, Wayne State University