Book Banning in 21st-Century America

Emily Knox is a professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include information access, intellectual freedom and censorship, information ethics and policy, and the intersection of print culture and reading practices. She is also a member of the Mapping Information Access research team.Her book, Book Banning in 21st Century America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015) is the first monograph in the Beta Phi Mu Scholars’ Series. Her most recent book Foundations of Intellectual Freedom won the 2023 Eli M. Oboler Prize for best published work in the area of intellectual freedom. Emily’s articles have been published in the Library Quarterly, Library and Information Science Research, and Open Information Science. Emily serves on the board of National Coalition Against Censorship and is the editor of the Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy.

• DedicationAcknowledgmentsPreface to the Second EditionPreface to the First EditionAcknowledgmentsChapter 1: UnprecedentedChapter 2: Power and Knowledge Chapter 3: Truth, Justice, & An American LibraryChapter 4: Perfect TimingChapter 5: A Nation Wars Against Its Own PeopleChapter 6: Inappropriate Institutions and OrganizationsChapter 7: Reading Should Edify the SoulChapter 8: Fear, Knowledge, and PowerAppendix AAppendix BBibliographyIndexAbout the Author

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.