BONUS | The Craziest Reasons Books Were Banned

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1:59which is what people who are banning books want you to think. But in fact, most of the books that are on the banned or the challenged or the censored list aren't what you would think at all, which is sort of the point. So I wanted to go through some books that have been banned historically, that have been challenged recently, that showed just how ridiculous book banning actually is. Okay, so Calendar of Wisdom. Tolstoy actually thought this was his best book, more important than War and Peace or any of his novels. It was a collection of ancient wisdom, spiritual wisdom, Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism, Stoicism.

2:32It was him picking a handful of passages from all the different traditions to meditate on each day. Now, you might not think that that's controversial, and it isn't controversial here in America, but it was banned by the Soviets shortly after it came out and basically lost completely until 1989. Only then was it rediscovered. Now it's become incredibly popular. but I read a page of it every day. But for almost a century, that wasn't possible, right? And it was banned by the Soviets because it was religious. I don't know, that's the point. There's often not a great logic behind why something gets banned, but once it gets banned, it's lost and it was lost for almost 100 years.

3:09We tend to think like books are being banned by the right or books are being banned by the left, but all governments for all time have banned books and they have banned some really important things that people should read. The 48 Laws of Power. This book is banned in the US federal prison system. A friend of mine works on death penalty cases and he has to tell defendants not to have this book in their cell because it might get used against them in sentencing. Look, this is an unfurnished look at human nature, power. Robert Greene is taking from Machiavelli and Sun Tzu and Talleyrand. He's taking from all these different experts on getting power, maintaining power, protecting yourself against power.

3:46So you can see why it might be popular with prisons. This book is also heavily shoplifted. But the point is some books actually are banned by the federal government. Some books they do make more or less illegal for people to have. But it is precisely the books that people are afraid of that they think are controversial that I would argue we need to read the most. If you're worried about other people using the ideas in this book, well then you should probably read it so you can defend yourself against it. Although I would say all the controversy about this book seems very silly to me. Robert is not just kind and generous, but he's a person of integrity and decency.

4:19that this is a book about how the world works, not a book about how the world should work. In 2021, the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, who has complained publicly about cancel culture and censorship and all that, canceled an event with the authors of this book because he disagreed with what was in it. This is, I wouldn't say revisionist history, but it's debunking of the myths around one of Texas's most celebrated icons and sort of the last stand at the Alamo, which is a little more complicated than, you know, the movies or the TV shows or the stories you learned as a kid tell you that it is. When I teach my kids who I'm raising in Texas about the Alamo, I've taken them to the Alamo.

5:00I've read them stories from A Time to Stand. I've read them from Perrigan's book. I've told them the inspiring, exciting, and dramatic versions of the Alamo. And then I've also told them the truth about the Alamo because you need to hear it from all sides to get to what actually matters. You probably read The Great Gatsby in high school. Here's the 100th anniversary edition. But maybe you didn't if you live in South Carolina or Florida because they tried to ban it. They tried to ban The Great Gatsby, one of the greatest novels ever written in English. Why? They thought it was vulgar. They thought it was inappropriate.

5:34It had strong language. When I heard about them trying to ban this book, I thought of that famous scene in the library in Gatsby's house where the guy's going through the books and he notices, this is how books used to be done, that none of the pages had been cut. Gatsby only interacted with his idea of what books were, not what was actually in them, which I think is fitting here and unfortunately a bit ironic. It's crazy actually how many classic novels widely considered to be some of the best ever written were banned or challenged at different points. Master and Margarita was banned by the Soviets.

6:08In fact, it was very difficult for Bolgakov to ever publish it. As early as 1885, Huckleberry Finn has been banned or challenged. We've been doing this for over 100 years with this book, arguing about the language in it, the racial stereotypes in it, even though, of course, the whole book is about pushing back against those stereotypes, against racism, which, of course, is also what Fahrenheit 451 is about, right? That it's not just the government trying to get transgressive books out of people's hands. The real argument that Ray Bradbury is trying to make is that it's people not wanting other people to be offended.

6:43People not liking things that offend them that leads to book banning. That's what it's actually about. And then of course, Irony of Ironies. That book has been banned. That book has been challenged. People have thought that book was inappropriate and offensive. Including in places like South Africa, Florida again, Irvine, California, here in Texas. And then most recently, the Elizabeth County School District in Colorado wanted parents to have to sign a permission slip if they wanted their kids to read it. So like we've been doing this a long time and missing the point for a long time. Brave New World is another book that is of course a classic that people have tried to ban at one time or another.

7:21And just because a book isn't banned everywhere doesn't mean they're not trying to ban it in a very specific place for ridiculous reasons. Like last year by order of the Secretary of Defense, the U.S. Naval academy was ordered to remove something like 400 books from the naval academy library that it thought were too woke one of those books was i know why the cage bird sings by maya angelou the idea that someone could be in charge of a nuclear submarine or an aircraft carrier at some point in the future that they could fly a fighter jet but they're too fragile to read maya angelou is not just ridiculous ridiculous on top of the ridiculousness i was supposed to give a talk shortly after this ban was announced and i was going to criticize that very idea and you know what they did they banned me from speaking there I'm not allowed at the Naval Academy anymore because not only did they ban books but they banned criticizing the idea of banning books it's not always serious literature that they're coming after oftentimes it's children's books and you just realize how dumb people are this is one of my favorite kids books I read this to my kids many times so when I saw that in Texas they tried to ban it I was aghast this is I need a new butt spoiler alert he needs a new butt because his has a crack in it this one it makes fart sounds which is pretty awesome so basically the story that happened with this one in 2022 a school principal read this book to his students of course kids being kids they started saying butt too much some parents got mad and complained then the superintendent fired him and then he sued the school district he spent a bunch of money on lawyers they spent a bunch of money on lawyers of course he ends up winning he wins a bunch of money as well it wasn't just lame and dumb, but it was expensive.

9:01So basically everybody lost, especially the taxpayers and the kids. One of the teachers told the New York Times, I love this quote, they said, you know, when you try to limit the books that kids can have, you limit the kind of person they can become. And that's exactly right. And that's what's so self-defeating about this close-mindedness, this sort of fragility, this getting offended. Like, are we really at a place as a society where where we're censoring books because it has the word butt in it? Are we really trying to prevent kids from being titillated and excited about understanding the power of words?

9:34Also, any book that gets kids excited, they're repeating ideas in it, that's a good thing. We don't want teachers and principals to be punished for reading to kids and for getting kids to love books, to be excited about them. So anyways, that's what I think of your book family. One of my favorite authors is Stefan Zweig. Some people know him for his book, The World of Yesterday, which is about the Europe that was lost in the destruction of World War I. But he's also a great biographer. He has a book about Magellan that I like. He has a book about Marie Antoinette. He was persecuted by the Nazis.

10:11His books were banned, his books were burned. One of my favorite books, his last book that he wrote right before he committed suicide, was this book, Montaigne. And you have Zweig, who's reeling from the censorship and the closed-mindedness of his time. He discovers Montaigne, the French essayist, who himself lived through the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation in Europe in the 1500s and 1600s. And you have Montaigne talking about the certainty that it takes to sentence someone to death or to ban or suppress ideas. He just talks about the intellectual hubris of that, which I think is an important thing to keep in mind when we talk about book banning and censorship.

10:49like we think we know we think we know what's appropriate we think we know what's right or not right and that tends not to age well I really love this book this one itself wasn't banned although it did get go out of print and I tried to buy up as much of the stock of it as possible but many many of Zweig's books were banned and impossible to get in Germany during the war and now we're here in my banned book lending library which is next to my bookstore and the book that we have many many copies of is Orwell's 1984. And the irony of 1984 is of course the Soviets had a big problem with it. They had a problem with Orwell's criticism of totalitarianism and censorship and authoritarianism.

11:34But the irony is not long after it was published it was also banned by a school district in Florida for being pro-communist because Orwell was a socialist. It's an illustration of the stupidity of this, that two schools of thought totally opposite ends of the spectrum are censoring the same book for basically the opposite reasons. And this wasn't just something happening a long time ago. In 2024, a group of parents in Colorado got the book banned, and it was only in 2025 that a federal judge restored access to it. So this is still happening, and that is why we have this banned book lending library here in Bastard, Texas.

12:10And if you have a favorite band book, we'd love for you to send it to us. You can send it to us Main Street here in Bastard, Texas. If you want more book recommendations, I send these out in my reading list newsletter, which I've sent out every month for 15 years. And you can sign up at ryanholiday.net slash reading list.

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