Book Banning: Censorship in the History of Literature

Take a look at a list of commonly banned books and one can see connections between many of them. Most attempted bans are based on four arguments. These are political, sexual, religious and social grounds for banning. 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature is broken into sections dealing with each of these four subsections of ban attempts. Each section covers 25 books and the reasons behind their bans or ban attempts. Many of these categories cover other areas, sexual bans are also generally attempted as religious bans and religion and politics go hand in hand.

Although Americans live in relative freedom, censorship has made its mark throughout our history. Many of our greatest pieces of literature have had attempted bans. In Belleville, Michigan, science teachers were forced to tear pages out of their science books which contained references to abortions. It is this social banning, a prohibition of ideas that make some people uncomfortable, that cause us to ban books. In 1983 Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl was censored by the Alabama Textbook Commission because it was "a real downer" (xii). Portions of the book were cut out completely because they included references to her friend's growing breasts and her own menstruation.