The Community-Building book club will aim to give people the resources and education necessary to fight tyranny in their communities. For people who want to help but don’t know where to start. For people who have been doing the work and want to connect with new people to join the fight. Enact change with small acts of kindness and love.

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.