The Brooklyn Public Library Gives Every Teenager in the U.S. Free Access to Books Getting Censored by American Schools

in Books, Current Affairs | August 22nd, 2022

We have cov­ered it before: school dis­tricts across the Unit­ed States are increas­ing­ly cen­sor­ing books that don’t align with white-washed con­ser­v­a­tive visions of the world. Art Spiegel­man’s Maus, The Illus­trat­ed Diary of Anne Frank, Alice Walk­er’s The Col­or Pur­ple, Toni Mor­rison’s The Bluest Eye, and Harp­er Lee’s To Kill a Mock­ing­bird–these are some of the many books get­ting pulled from library shelves in Amer­i­can schools. In response to this con­cern­ing trend, the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library has made a bold move: For a lim­it­ed time, the library will offer a free eCard to any per­son aged 13 to 21 across the Unit­ed States, allow­ing them free access to 500,000 dig­i­tal books, includ­ing many cen­sored books. The Chief Librar­i­an for the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library, Nick Hig­gins said:

A pub­lic library rep­re­sents all of us in a plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety we exist with oth­er peo­ple, with oth­er ideas, oth­er view­points and per­spec­tives and that’s what makes a healthy democ­ra­cy — not shut­ting down access to those points of view or silenc­ing voic­es that we don’t agree with, but expand­ing access to those voic­es and hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions and ideas that we agree with and ideas that we don’t agree with.

And he added:

This is an intel­lec­tu­al free­dom to read ini­tia­tive by the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library. You know, we’ve been pay­ing atten­tion to a lot of the book chal­lenges and bans that have been tak­ing place, par­tic­u­lar­ly over the last year in many places across the coun­try. We don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly expe­ri­ence a whole lot of that here in Brook­lyn, but we know that there are library patrons and library staff who are fac­ing these and we want­ed to fig­ure out a way to step in and help, par­tic­u­lar­ly for young peo­ple who are see­ing, some books in their library col­lec­tions that may rep­re­sent them, but they’re being tak­en off the shelves.

As for how to get the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library’s free eCard, their Books Unbanned web­site offers the fol­low­ing instruc­tions: “indi­vid­u­als ages 13–21 can apply for a free BPL eCard, pro­vid­ing access to our full eBook col­lec­tion as well as our learn­ing data­bas­es. To apply, email

bo***********@bk**********.org











.” In short, send them an email.

You can find a list of Amer­i­ca’s most fre­quent­ly banned books at the web­site of the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion.

NOTE: We’re see­ing reports on Twit­ter that a teacher in Nor­man, OK has been ter­mi­nat­ed for let­ting a stu­dent know about the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library’s free library. While this report has­n’t been ful­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed, teach­ers who want to rec­om­mend this resource should pro­ceed with cau­tion. Par­ents could seem­ing­ly refer BPL’s free library to stu­dents with less con­cern about retal­i­a­tion.

via KTVB

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Texas School Board Bans Illus­trat­ed Edi­tion of The Diary of Anne Frank

Ten­nessee School Board Bans Maus, the Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Graph­ic Nov­el on the Holo­caust; the Book Becomes #1 Best­seller on Ama­zon

The 850 Books a Texas Law­mak­er Wants to Ban Because They Could Make Stu­dents Feel Uncom­fort­able

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

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How Salman Rushdie Has Lived and Written Under the Threat of Death: a Free Documentary

in Current Affairs, Literature, Television | August 22nd, 2022

Alfred Hitch­cock spe­cial­ized in films about marked men: inno­cents, more or less, who sud­den­ly find them­selves pur­sued by sin­is­ter forces to the ends of the Earth. Lit­tle won­der, then, that Salman Rushdie would count him­self a Hitch­cock fan. The nov­el­ist ref­er­ences the film­mak­er more than once in Salman Rushdie: Writ­ing Under Death Threats, the DW tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary above. He remem­bers a sequence from The Birds that cuts between stu­dents in a class­room and the play­ground out­side: in one shot a black­bird comes to sit on the jun­gle gym, and just a few shots lat­er it’s been joined by 500 more. “The case of what hap­pened to The Satan­ic Vers­es was, it was some­thing like the first black­bird.”

Rushdie refers, of course, to the fat­wa called down upon him in response to that nov­el­’s sup­posed blas­phemies against Islam by Aya­tol­lah Khome­i­ni. As a result he had to spend most of the sub­se­quent decade in hid­ing, under the pro­tec­tion of the British gov­ern­ment. By the time of this doc­u­men­tary, which came out in 2018, the dan­ger seemed to have passed.

“What’s hap­pen­ing now, as the scan­dal goes away,” he says of The Satan­ic Vers­es, “is that peo­ple are able to read it as a book, rather than as some kind of scan­dalous text.” But the dan­ger had not passed, as we learned ear­li­er this month when Rushdie was stabbed onstage at a lit­er­ary event in upstate New York, avoid­ing death by what’s been report­ed as a nar­row mar­gin indeed.

This sto­ry has its ironies, not least that Rushdie’s attack­er was born in Cal­i­for­nia a decade after the Iran­ian gov­ern­men­t’s dis­avow­al of the fat­wa. But for Rushdie him­self, the attempt on his life can’t have come entire­ly as a sur­prise: he saw the gath­er­ing black­birds of vio­lent fanati­cism as well as those of met­ro­pol­i­tan com­pla­cen­cy. Reflect­ing on the 2015 attack on French satir­i­cal mag­a­zine Char­lie Heb­do, he laments that “even peo­ple who are on the lib­er­al, pro­gres­sive, left­ist end of the spec­trum now find ‘prob­lem­at­ic’ the idea of sup­port­ing peo­ple who make fun of reli­gion.” Always and every­where, writ­ing has been done under the threat of one kind of pun­ish­ment or anoth­er; more than 30 years after The Satan­ic Vers­es, Rushdie’s case remains the most har­row­ing­ly extreme illus­tra­tion of the writer’s con­di­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

When Christo­pher Hitchens Vig­i­lant­ly Defend­ed Salman Rushdie After the Fat­wah: “It Was a Mat­ter of Every­thing I Hat­ed Ver­sus Every­thing I Loved”

Hear Salman Rushdie Read Don­ald Barthelme’s “Con­cern­ing the Body­guard” 

Jeff Koons and Salman Rushdie Teach New Cours­es on Art, Cre­ativ­i­ty & Sto­ry­telling for Mas­ter­Class

Salman Rushdie: Machiavelli’s Bad Rap

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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When Christopher Hitchens Vigilantly Defended Salman Rushdie After the Fatwah: “It Was a Matter of Everything I Hated Versus Everything I Loved”

in Current Affairs, Literature, Politics, Religion | August 16th, 2022

I have often been asked if Christo­pher defend­ed me because he was my close friend. The truth is that he became my close friend because he want­ed to defend me. –Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie remains in crit­i­cal con­di­tion after suf­fer­ing mul­ti­ple stab wounds while on stage in New York, a shock­ing occur­rence but not quite sur­pris­ing giv­en that the author has lived with a death sen­tence over his head since 1989. (You can read the his­to­ry of that con­tro­ver­sy here.) The nation of Iran has denied any respon­si­bil­i­ty for the attack on the author, but it’s prob­a­bly safe to assume that his 1988 nov­el The Satan­ic Vers­es has some­thing to do with it, over thir­ty years after the fact.

“Even before the fat­wa,” Steven Erlanger writes in The New York Times, “the book was banned in a num­ber of coun­tries, includ­ing India, Bangladesh, Sudan and Sri Lan­ka.” Protests of the nov­el result­ed in sev­er­al deaths and attacks on book­sellers. Rushdie had not set out to enrage much of the Islam­ic world, but nei­ther had he any inter­est in appeas­ing its con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers. Always out­spo­ken, and a fero­cious crit­ic of British Empire as well as Islam­ic theoc­ra­cy, his career since the fat­wa has demon­strat­ed a com­mit­ment to free­ing the lit­er­ary arts from the dic­tates of church and state.

On the sub­ject of impe­ri­al­ism, Rushdie and the late Christo­pher Hitchens came to dis­agree after the U.S.‘s inva­sion of Iraq and Hitchens’ “U‑turn across the polit­i­cal high­way to join forces with the war-mak­ers of George W. Bush’s admin­is­tra­tion,” Rushdie writes in a Van­i­ty Fair appre­ci­a­tion for Hitchens’ after the lat­ter’s death. But his book God is Not Great “car­ried Hitch away from the Amer­i­can right and back toward his nat­ur­al, lib­er­al, ungod­ly con­stituen­cy”; a col­lec­tion of peo­ple who see the free expres­sion of ideas as a far prefer­able con­di­tion to the exis­tence of theo­crat­ic death squads.

Wher­ev­er he fell at any giv­en time on the polit­i­cal spec­trum, Hitchens nev­er gave up his defense of Rushdie, one in which, as he wrote in his mem­oir, Hitch-22, he was com­plete­ly com­mit­ted from the start:

It was, if I can phrase it like this, a mat­ter of every­thing I hat­ed ver­sus every­thing I loved. In the hate col­umn: dic­ta­tor­ship, reli­gion, stu­pid­i­ty, dem­a­gogy, cen­sor­ship, bul­ly­ing, and intim­i­da­tion. In the love col­umn: lit­er­a­ture, irony, humor, the indi­vid­ual, and the defense of free expres­sion. Plus, of course, friend­ship– 

Hitchens was grave­ly dis­ap­point­ed in lib­er­al writ­ers like Arthur Miller who refused to pub­licly sup­port Rushdie out of fear, as he says in the tele­vi­sion inter­view at the top of the post. The ambiva­lent response of many on the left struck him as gross polit­i­cal cow­ardice and hypocrisy. He went on the attack, argu­ing round­ly on pop­u­lar shows like Ques­tion Time (below, with his broth­er Peter, Baroness Williams, and recent­ly deposed prime min­is­ter Boris John­son).

Hitchens “saw that the attack on The Satan­ic Vers­es was not an iso­lat­ed occur­rence,” Rushdie writes, “that across the Mus­lim world, writ­ers and jour­nal­ists and artists were being accused of the same crimes — blas­phe­my, heresy, apos­ta­sy, and their mod­ern-day asso­ciates, ‘insult’ and ‘offense.’ ” Rushdie had meant no offense, he writes, “I had not cho­sen the bat­tle.” But it seems to have cho­sen him:

It was at least the right bat­tle, because in it every­thing that I loved and val­ued (lit­er­a­ture, free­dom, irrev­er­ence, free­dom, irre­li­gion, free­dom) was ranged against every­thing I detest­ed (fanati­cism, vio­lence, big­otry, humor­less­ness, philis­tin­ism, and the new offense cul­ture of the age). Then I read Christo­pher using exact­ly the same every­thing-he-loved-ver­sus-every­thing-he-hat­ed trope, and felt… under­stood.

If the fat­wa against Rushdie made him infa­mous, it did not make him uni­ver­sal­ly beloved, even among his fel­low writ­ers, but he always had a fierce ally in Hitchens. Let’s hope Rushdie can pick up the fight for free expres­sion once again when he recov­ers from this bru­tal stab­bing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens Dis­miss­es the Cult of Ayn Rand: There’s No “Need to Have Essays Advo­cat­ing Self­ish­ness Among Human Beings; It Requires No Rein­force­ment”

Hear Salman Rushdie Read Don­ald Barthelme’s “Con­cern­ing the Body­guard” 

Jeff Koons and Salman Rushdie Teach New Cours­es on Art, Cre­ativ­i­ty & Sto­ry­telling for Mas­ter­Class

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Why You Should Read The Handmaid’s Tale: A Timely Animated Introduction

in Books, Current Affairs, Politics | July 6th, 2022

Prophe­cies are real­ly about now. In sci­ence fic­tion it’s always about now. What else could it be about? There is no future. There are many pos­si­bil­i­ties, but we do not know which one we are going to have.

– Mar­garet Atwood

There is no need to explain why Mar­garet Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale has gone from read­ing like a warn­ing of the near-future to an alle­go­ry of the present after the U.S. Supreme Court’s rul­ing in Dobbs v. Jack­son Women’s Health Orga­ni­za­tion. Atwood’s sto­ry revolves around the fic­tion­al Repub­lic of Gilead, which takes over the U.S. after a fer­til­i­ty cri­sis dec­i­mates the pop­u­la­tion. Overnight, the fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian theoc­ra­cy divides women into two broad class­es – Hand­maids: chat­tel who per­form the labor of forced birth through forced con­cep­tion; and the infer­tile who prop up the patri­ar­chal rul­ing class as wives, over­seers, or slave labor in the pol­lut­ed “colonies.”

It’s a bleak tale, a sto­ry far less about hero­ism than the TV series based on the book would have viewers–who haven’t read it–believe. (The 5th sea­son, slat­ed for this July, seems to have been delayed until Sep­tem­ber with­out expla­na­tion.) Why should we read The Hand­maid­’s Tale? Because it is not only a work of dystopi­an futur­ism, but also a nar­ra­tivized account of what has already hap­pened to women around the world through­out his­to­ry to the present. The nov­el is a prism through which to view the ways women have been oppressed through repro­duc­tive slav­ery with­out the sci-fi sce­nario of a pre­cip­i­tous loss of human fer­til­i­ty.

As Atwood has explained, “when I wrote The Hand­maid­’s Tale, noth­ing went into it that had not hap­pened in real life some­where at some time.” Some of the worst offens­es were not well-known. “Female gen­i­tal muti­la­tion was tak­ing place,” says Atwood, “but if I had put it in 1985 [when the nov­el was writ­ten] prob­a­bly peo­ple wouldn’t have known what I was talk­ing about. They do now.” But we can still choose to over­look the infor­ma­tion. “Ignor­ing isn’t the same as igno­rance,” Atwood says in the nov­el, “you have to work at it.” The quote opens the 2018 TED-Ed les­son by Nao­mi Mer­cer above on Atwood’s book, walk­ing us through its sources in his­to­ry.

The Hand­maid­’s Tale, the les­son points out, is an exam­ple of “Spec­u­la­tive Fic­tion,” a form of writ­ing con­cerned with “pos­si­ble futures.” This theme unites both utopi­an and dystopi­an nov­els. Atwood’s books trade in the lat­ter, but any read­er of the genre will tell you how quick­ly a more per­fect fic­tion­al union becomes a night­mare. The Cana­di­an writer has offered this lit­er­ary inevitabil­i­ty as an expla­na­tion for the mul­ti­ple crises of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy:

The real rea­son peo­ple expect so much of Amer­i­ca in mod­ern times is that it set out to be a utopia. That didn’t last very long. Nathaniel Hawthorne nailed it when he said the first thing they did when they got to Amer­i­ca was build a scaf­fold and a prison.

What Atwood does­n’t men­tion, as many crit­ics have point­ed out, are the slave pens and auc­tion hous­es, or the fact that Gilead close­ly resem­bles the slave-hold­ing Amer­i­can South in its theo­crat­ic patri­ar­chal Chris­t­ian hier­ar­chy and ulti­mate con­trol of wom­en’s bod­ies. And yet, the nov­el com­plete­ly side­steps race by hav­ing the Repub­lic of Gilead ship all of the coun­try’s Black peo­ple to the Mid­west (pre­sum­ably for forced labor). They are nev­er heard from again by the read­er.

This tac­tic has seemed irre­spon­si­ble to many crit­ics, as has the show’s side­step­ping through col­or­blind cast­ing, and the wear­ing of red cloaks and white bon­nets in imi­ta­tion of the book and show as a means of protest. “When we rely too heav­i­ly on ‘The Hand­maid­’s Tale,’ which ignores the pres­ence of race and racism,” says activist Ali­cia Sanchez Gill, “it real­ly dehu­man­izes and dis­miss­es our col­lec­tive expe­ri­ences of repro­duc­tive trau­ma.” Atwood’s “pos­si­ble future” pil­lages slav­ery’s past and con­ve­nient­ly gets rid of its descen­dants.

The trau­ma Gill ref­er­ences includes rape and forced birth, as well as the forced ster­il­iza­tions of the eugen­ics move­ment, car­ried out with the impri­matur of the Supreme Court (and con­tin­u­ing in recent cas­es). Kel­li Midg­ley, who found­ed Hand­maids Army DC, offers one expla­na­tion for using The Hand­maid­’s Tale as a protest sym­bol. Though she agrees to leave the cos­tumes at home if asked by orga­niz­ers, she says “we are try­ing to reach a broad­er audi­ence for peo­ple who need this mes­sage. We don’t need to tell Black women that their rights are endan­gered. They always have been.”

Maybe a new mes­sage after Dobbs v. Jack­son Wom­en’s Health Orga­ni­za­tion is that an assault on any­one’s rights threat­ens every­one. Or as Atwood wrote in a Cana­di­an Globe and Mail op-ed in 2018, “depriv­ing women of con­tra­cep­tive infor­ma­tion, repro­duc­tive rights, a liv­ing wage, and pre­na­tal and mater­nal care – as some states in the US want to do – is prac­ti­cal­ly a death sen­tence, and is a con­tra­ven­tion of basic human rights. But Gilead, being total­i­tar­i­an, does not respect uni­ver­sal human rights.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­garet Atwood Releas­es an Unburn­able Edi­tion of The Handmaid’s Tale, to Sup­port Free­dom of Expres­sion

Pret­ty Much Pop #10 Exam­ines Mar­garet Atwood’s Night­mare Vision: The Handmaid’s Tale

Hear Mar­garet Atwood’s Sto­ry “Stone Mat­tress,” Read by Author A. M. Homes 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Ray Dalio Is Giving Away Free Copies of His New Book Principles for Dealing with the Changing World to High School & College Teachers and Their Students

in Books, Current Affairs, History | May 5th, 2022

As we not­ed back in March, investor Ray Dalio has pub­lished his lat­est best­seller, Prin­ci­ples for Deal­ing with the Chang­ing World: Why Nations Suc­ceed and Fail. A his­to­ry of the rise and fall of empires over the last 500 years, the book uses the past to con­tem­plate the future, par­tic­u­lar­ly the fate of the Unit­ed States and Chi­na. Today, for Teacher Appre­ci­a­tion Week, Dalio has announced that he’s will­ing to give a copy of the book “to any high school or col­lege edu­ca­tor who wants it—and to all of their stu­dents if they intend to have them read it.” He writes:

Since releas­ing my book and ani­mat­ed video [above], Prin­ci­ples for Deal­ing with the Chang­ing World Order, many peo­ple have told me that both would be help­ful for teach­ing his­to­ry in schools and asked me if I would help make that hap­pen. So, dur­ing this Teacher Appre­ci­a­tion Week I will give a copy of the book to any high school or col­lege edu­ca­tor who wants it—and to all of their stu­dents if they intend to have them read it. And if there’s a lot of inter­est, I’d be hap­py to extend the offer past this week. Of course, the Youtube video is already free and eas­i­ly avail­able and I encour­age you to check that out if you want an overview of what’s in the book.

When you sign up, let me know if you’re inter­est­ed in me host­ing a live online ses­sion for class­rooms, which I’ll do if peo­ple would like it. If you are not an edu­ca­tor but know some who might be inter­est­ed in this offer, please share this link with them.

To access the offer, click here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Prin­ci­ples for Deal­ing with the Chang­ing World Order: An Ani­mat­ed Video Explain­ing Key Ideas in Ray Dalio’s New Best­selling Book

The Prin­ci­ples for Suc­cess by Entre­pre­neur & Investor Ray Dalio: A 30-Minute Ani­mat­ed Primer

Eco­nom­ics 101: Hedge Fund Investor Ray Dalio Explains How the Econ­o­my Works in a 30-Minute Ani­mat­ed Video

Ray Dalio & Adam Grant Launch Free Online Per­son­al­i­ty Assess­ment to Help You Under­stand Your­self (and Oth­ers Under­stand You)

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The New York Public Library Provides Free Online Access to Banned Books: Catcher in the Rye, Stamped & More

in Books, Current Affairs | April 18th, 2022


Each year in mid-Sep­tem­ber, we cel­e­brate Banned Books Week, and each year I see a hand­ful of peo­ple argu­ing that the cel­e­bra­tion, or memo­r­i­al, is self indul­gent and out of touch. No one in the U.S. seri­ous­ly tries to ban books, right? Book ban­ning — as Gayle King said last Sep­tem­ber on CBS Morn­ings — is “an issue we tend to asso­ciate with the past.”

Yet even before the recent moral pan­ics over “crit­i­cal race the­o­ry” and gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty issues, teach­ers and librar­i­ans would have strong­ly dis­agreed that attempts to ban books ever went away. Books are chal­lenged all the time in front of school boards, and have, many times in the recent past, appeared on lists hand­ed around by state and fed­er­al leg­is­la­tors.

The lat­est round of book ban­nings rep­re­sents an esca­la­tion, rather than a return, of the tac­tic. Not that law­mak­ers are like­ly to have read any of 850 or so books on a recent list of sus­pects. But too many seem eager to endorse bills that restrict what stu­dents can read, teach­ers can teach, and libraries can lend — leg­is­la­tion sole­ly based on the stan­dard of “com­fort.” As in… if the facts of Amer­i­can his­to­ry make some stu­dents (or their par­ents) uncom­fort­able, then damn the facts of Amer­i­can his­to­ry.….

Ta-Nahasi Coates — whose Between the World and Me was banned in some com­mu­ni­ties in 2020 — tells King that this is no coin­ci­dence. “For most of Amer­i­can his­to­ry,” he says, “African Amer­i­can authors have not had the pur­chase on the Amer­i­can con­science that they do right now.” The same goes for LGBTQ authors and writ­ers from oth­er mar­gin­al­ized groups, whose books are chal­lenged and banned in schools and libraries with aggres­sive fre­quen­cy.

What Coates calls a “pur­chase on the Amer­i­can con­science” is what we might also call empa­thy — a qual­i­ty that good writ­ing inspires in curi­ous read­ers, and that many peo­ple seem to find threat­en­ing. Every democ­ra­cy, how­ev­er, must learn that it is “igno­rance [that] is dan­ger­ous,” as pres­i­dent of the New York Pub­lic Library Tony Marx writes, “bread­ing hate and divi­sion.” Learn­ing about, and car­ing about, the expe­ri­ences of oth­ers does the oppo­site.

To keep banned books freely avail­able to read­ers who want access to them, the New York Pub­lic Library has part­nered with pub­lish­ers in a project called Books for All to reach read­ers wher­ev­er they may be. Marx emphat­i­cal­ly states the need for such an effort:

The recent instances of both attempt­ed and suc­cess­ful book ban­ning — pri­mar­i­ly on titles that explore race, LGBTQ+ issues, reli­gion, and his­to­ry — are extreme­ly dis­turb­ing and amount to an all-out attack on the very foun­da­tion of our democ­ra­cy.… The Library’s role is to make sure no per­spec­tive, no idea, no iden­ti­ty is erased.

There are cur­rent­ly four books offered under the pro­jec­t’s aegis through the end of May, and they’re avail­able to read­ers across the Unit­ed States:

Speak | Lau­rie Halse Ander­son (Square Fish / Macmil­lan Pub­lish­ers)

King and the Drag­on­flies | Kacen Cal­len­der (Scholas­tic)

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You | Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Ken­di (Lit­tle, Brown Books for Young Read­ers / Hachette Book Group)

The Catch­er in the Rye | J.D. Salinger (Lit­tle, Brown and Com­pa­ny / Hachette Book Group)

To access these titles, all of which have faced bans or chal­lenges, you will need to down­load the NYPL’s free read­er app, Sim­plyE, for iOS or Android–all from the Books for All site. Then you can read the book right away “with our with­out a library card,” the library notes. “No waits, no fines.”

One hopes the Books for All project will expand to offer more titles from the increas­ing­ly greater num­ber of books being pushed out of pub­lic view because they make those in pow­er uncom­fort­able. Or, bet­ter yet, one hopes that dozens of sim­i­lar projects will arise; that the slo­gan “books for all” can become a real­i­ty, regard­less of who makes pol­i­cy. Learn more and sign up for your free Sim­plyE account at the Books for All site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 850 Books a Texas Law­mak­er Wants to Ban Because They Could Make Stu­dents Feel Uncom­fort­able

America’s First Banned Book: Dis­cov­er the 1637 Book That Mocked the Puri­tans

Read 14 Great Banned & Cen­sored Nov­els Free Online: For Banned Books Week 2014

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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“Europe’s Big Lie About Ukraine,” According to Stephen Fry

in Current Affairs | April 13th, 2022

“We’ll go down in his­to­ry as the first soci­ety that would­n’t save itself because it was­n’t cost effec­tive.”
–Kurt Von­negut

When Rus­sia invad­ed Ukraine, the West respond­ed with sanc­tions, arms ship­ments, and lots of moral sup­port. But then it drew a line. Europe (par­tic­u­lar­ly Ger­many) stills buys Russ­ian gas and oil in vast quan­ti­ties, effec­tive­ly bankrolling Putin’s bloody mil­i­tary cam­paign. It shows no incli­na­tion to make hard sac­ri­fices, includ­ing cut­ting fuel con­sump­tion or poten­tial­ly putting jobs at risk. And for­get about a No-Fly zone. All of this leaves some won­der­ing about Europe’s real moti­va­tions and cal­cu­la­tions. Above, writer and actor Stephen Fry lays out his skep­ti­cal take in a 14-minute video.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Stephen Fry on the Pow­er of Words in Nazi Ger­many: How Dehu­man­iz­ing Lan­guage Laid the Foun­da­tion for Geno­cide

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Knew When I Was 18

How Ukraine’s Works of Art Are Being Saved in Wartime–Using the Lessons of World War II

Sav­ing Ukrain­ian Cul­tur­al Her­itage Online: 1,000+ Librar­i­ans Dig­i­tal­ly Pre­serve Arti­facts of Ukrain­ian Civ­i­liza­tion Before Rus­sia Can Destroy Them

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How Ukraine’s Works of Art Are Being Saved in Wartime–Using the Lessons of World War II

in Art, Current Affairs, History | April 11th, 2022

Much in Ukraine has been lost since the Russ­ian inva­sion com­menced this past Feb­ru­ary. But efforts to min­i­mize the dam­age have been respond­ing on all fronts, and not just geo­graph­i­cal ones. The preser­va­tion of Ukrain­ian cul­ture has become the top pri­or­i­ty for some groups, in response to Russ­ian forces’ seem­ing intent to destroy it. “Cul­tur­al her­itage is not only impact­ed, but in many ways it’s impli­cat­ed in and cen­tral to armed con­flict,” says Hay­den Bas­sett, direc­tor of the Vir­ginia Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry’s Cul­tur­al Her­itage Mon­i­tor­ing Lab, in the Vox explain­er above. “These are things that peo­ple point to that are uni­fy­ing fac­tors for their soci­ety. They are tan­gi­ble reflec­tions of their soci­ety.”

This very qual­i­ty made them a sad­ly appeal­ing tar­get for Russ­ian attacks. As the video’s nar­ra­tor puts it, Vladimir Putin “has made it clear that iden­ti­ty is at the ide­o­log­i­cal cen­ter of Rus­si­a’s inva­sion,” osten­si­bly an effort to reuni­fy two lands of a com­mon civ­i­liza­tion. For Ukraine, the strat­e­gy to pro­tect its own cul­tur­al her­itage dur­ing wartime involves two phas­es of work.

First, “iden­ti­fy what needs pro­tect­ing,” already a require­ment of the 1954 Con­ven­tion for the Pro­tec­tion of Cul­tur­al Prop­er­ty in the Event of Armed Con­flict (known as the “Hague Con­ven­tion). In Ukraine’s case, the list includes no few­er than sev­en UNESCO World Her­itage Sites.

Step two is to secure these cul­tur­al trea­sures, whether they be paint­ings, sculp­tures, build­ings, or any­thing else besides. This requires the col­lab­o­ra­tion of “gov­ern­ment agen­cies, mil­i­taries, NGOs, aca­d­e­mics, muse­um insti­tu­tions,” says Bas­sett, as well as of vol­un­teers on the ground phys­i­cal­ly safe­guard­ing the arti­facts. This often involves hid­ing them when­ev­er pos­si­ble, and “if his­to­ry is any indi­ca­tion,” says the nar­ra­tor, “col­lec­tions have moved under­ground or out­side of major cities, or out­side the coun­try entire­ly.” So it was in Europe under the maraud­ing of Nazi Ger­many, includ­ing, as seen in the France 24 seg­ment above, with hold­ings of the Lou­vre up to and includ­ing the Mona Lisa. The state of world geopol­i­tics today may have us won­der­ing if we’ve tru­ly learned the lessons of the Sec­ond World War, but at least the fight to save Ukrain­ian cul­ture reminds that we haven’t for­got­ten them all.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Sav­ing Ukrain­ian Cul­tur­al Her­itage Online: 1,000+ Librar­i­ans Dig­i­tal­ly Pre­serve Arti­facts of Ukrain­ian Civ­i­liza­tion Before Rus­sia Can Destroy Them

Take a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tour of the World’s Stolen Art

Ukraini­ans Play­ing Vio­lin in Bunkers as Rus­sians Bomb Them from the Sky

Lis­ten to Last Seen, a True-Crime Pod­cast That Takes You Inside an Unsolved, $500 Mil­lion Art Heist

When Pablo Picas­so and Guil­laume Apol­li­naire Were Accused of Steal­ing the Mona Lisa (1911)

Why Rus­sia Invad­ed Ukraine: A Use­ful Primer

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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