That Book Is Dangerous! - by Adam Szetela (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

An alarming exposé of the new challenges to literary freedom in the age of social media--when anyone with an identity and an internet connection can be a censor.

In That Book Is Dangerous!, Adam Szetela investigates how well-intentioned and often successful efforts to diversify American literature have also produced serious problems for literary freedom. Although progressives are correct to be focused on right-wing attempts at legislative censorship, Szetela argues for attention to the ways that left-wing censorship controls speech within the publishing industry itself.

The author draws on interviews with presidents and vice presidents at the Big Five publishers, literary agents at the most prestigious agencies, award-winning authors, editors, marketers, sensitivity readers, and other industry professionals to examine the new publishing landscape.

What he finds is unsettling: mandatory sensitivity reads; morality clauses in author contracts; even censorship of "dangerous" books in the name of antiracism, feminism, and other forms of social justice. These changes to acquisition practices, editing policies, and other aspects of literary culture are a direct outgrowth of the culture of public outcries on X, Goodreads, Change.org, and other online platforms, where users accuse authors--justifiably or not--of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other transgressions. But rather than genuinely address the economic inequities of literary production, this current moral crusade over literature serves only to entrench the status quo. "While the right is remaking the world in its image," he writes, "the left is standing in a circular firing squad."

Compellingly argued and incisively written, the book is a much-needed wake-up call for anyone who cares about reading, writing, and the publication of books--as well as the generations of young readers we are raising.

Review Quotes

"Adam Szetela's book is an indispensable investigation of the self-censorship happening behind closed doors inside publishers, literary agencies, and other institutions that have traditionally supported robust free speech. Even for those of us who have followed these developments with concern, his book reveals important new details and is illuminated by fascinating interdisciplinary analysis spanning the fields of law, sociology, moral philosophy, social psychology, political science, economics, and history. Szetela's own book is itself dangerous--to the modern-day book burners who want to restrict the scope of what can be written and read."
--Nadine Strossen, John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita, New York Law School; former President, American Civil Liberties Union; author of HATE

"Szetela engagingly shows that censorship, thought-policing, and the punishment of heretics need not arise from autocratic governments or established religions. They can emerge in private organizations within a liberal democracy--organizations, ironically, whose mission would seem to be the free expression of ideas. This book should mobilize lovers of literate culture with common sense to push back on this madness. And it reminds us that censoriousness may be a part of human nature, and eternal vigilance the price of free speech."
--Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University; author of Rationality

"If you believe in literature and wish it to have a future, read this brilliant book. Szetela offers a sobering snapshot of our censorial moment and both suggests and partakes in the courage required to undo it."
--Junot Díaz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

"This brilliant book by Adam Szetela shows us how to make sense of the profoundly destructive and illiberal culture that passes for progressivism today. He not only describes in some detail how literary production is being suppressed in the name of social sensitivity but also how the entire enterprise reflects the interests and strategies of emergent elites. If there are more books like this one, we might just manage to crawl out of the wreckage."
--Vivek Chibber, Professor of Sociology, New York University; author of The Class Matrix

"Adam Szetela's well-researched, gutsy, insightful provocation bears eloquent witness to the concern of fellow progressives over the censorship of books in the name of progressive values."
--Donald E. Pease, Professor of English, Dartmouth College; author of Theodor Geisel

"Adam Szetela has written an absorbing account of the moral panic that incited a rebirth of censorship in the 21st century. No other history covers the field so broadly, from writing programs to professional journalism, from young adult fiction to New Yorker contracts. His scholarship may help us to avert a second generation of trigger warnings, sensitivity readers, and morality clauses."
--David Bromwich, Sterling Professor of English, Yale University; author of Politics by Other Means

About the Author

Adam Szetela is a PhD student in the Department of Literatures in English at Cornell University. Before that, he was a visiting fellow in the Department of History at Harvard University. He writes for The Washington Post, The Guardian, Newsweek, and other publications.