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.
