Summary

Praise for the previous edition:
"The summaries are sufficiently meaty to give the reader an understanding of the issues... Recommended for all public, school, and academic libraries."—Library Journal

Censorship of religious and philosophical speculation is as old as history and as current as today's headlines. Many of the world's major religious texts, including the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran, and others, have been suppressed, condemned, or proscribed at some time. Works of secular literature that touch upon religious beliefs or reflect dissenting views have also been suppressed.

Literature Suppressed on Religious Grounds, Third Edition profiles the censorship of many of these works, including the frequently challenged Harry Potter series, which critics accuse of promoting witchcraft and anti-family themes. Other recent popular books challenged for religious reasons include Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy and Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.

New and revised entries include:

• The Age of Reason (Thomas Paine)
• The Analects (Confucius)
• The Battle for God (Karen Armstrong)
• The Bible
• Children of the Alley (Naguib Mahfouz)
• Critique of Pure Reason (Immanuel Kant)
• The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
• Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Galileo Galilei)
• Discourse on Method (Rene Descartes)
• Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra)
• The Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowling)
• His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman)
• The Jewel of Medina (Sherry Jones)
• The Koran
• The Last Temptation of Christ (Nikos Kazantzakis)
• On the Origin of Species (Charles Darwin)
• The Satanic Verses (Salman Rushdie)
• The Talmud
• and more.

Specifications

Index. Biographical appendix. Complete listing of all works discussed in all volumes.

About the Author(s)

Margaret Bald is a former freelance journalist and foreign correspondent who has written extensively about literature, censorship, and human rights. She is the editor of From the Sahara to Samarkand: Selected Travel Writings of Rosita Forbes, 1919-1937. She has been an editorial consultant to the United Nations, managing editor of World Press Review magazine, and research administrator of the National Writers Union. She is currently the managing editor at a social policy research organization and lives in Brooklyn, New York.