That Book Is Dangerous!

Selected by PBS Books for the National Library Week Nonfiction book list.

Selected by the Times Literary Supplement as a Book of the Year


“[A] devastating work of scholarship . . . Mr. Szetela is a courageous and capable chronicler of the publishing industry’s nervous breakdown”
—The Wall Street Journal

““Fiery and insightful … Szetela is a quick-witted, sarcastic cultural critic.”
—The Washington Post

“An engaging book.”
—The Economist

“An absolutely vital piece of work.”
—The Times

“Szetela’s cutting debut reveals how progressives’ moral panic has created a chilling effect throughout the publishing industry.”
—Publishers Weekly

“The book is part sober sociological study containing dozens of interviews with editors, agents, and authors—almost all of whom speak anonymously—and part feisty polemic.”
—The Daily Telegraph

“A sometimes-scathing commentary on the state of the publishing industry and identity politics, for readers worried about literary freedom.”
—Library Journal

“[A] horrifyingly compelling book … offers a sobering report from the front lines of how identity politics and online pile-ons against anyone who sins against the latest pieties actually play out in the world of American publishing.”
—The Spectator

“A meticulously researched new book on the ills of contemporary literary culture … Szetela offers a useful corrective.”
—Quillette

“Answers for what ails literature in today’s complicated world can be found in [Szetela’s] new book.”
—Counterpunch

“With verve and erudition … the unavoidable takeaway from Szetela’s sharply-etched and powerfully argued book is that left-wing illiberalism has been institutionalized.”
—The Dispatch

“Szetela’s book is both a strong defense of the ideals of diversity and sensitivity and an equally strong condemnation of the ways in which the sensitivity era is destroying them.”
—Leonardo

“Sadly prescient … What any given case represents is subject to debate, and there are rules for reasonable discussion, familiar since at least Milton’s Areopagitica or the Age of Enlightenment. As Szetela argues, we should have that debate and quit with the circular firing squads. We need to get this right.”
—Massachusetts Review

“It’s been described as publishing’s most polarizing role: the sensitivity readers … Can their work amount to a new and unhealthy form of censorship, one that prevents readers [from] engaging with ideas and opinions that might make them feel uncomfortable, but which provide accurate insights into the world as it is or was? Well, that’s part of the contention of That Book Is Dangerous! How Moral Panic, Social Media, and the Culture Wars Are Remaking Publishing.”
—The BBC

“Szetela examines how well-intentioned efforts to diversify literature have triggered a wave of censorship, from mandatory sensitivity reads to morality clauses and social media–driven book cancellations, creating a chilling effect across publishing.”
—The Capital Times

“The situation’s not over … It’s surprising that anything actually gets published … A fascinating book.”
—GB News

“Social media backlash and review-bombing are increasingly leading to books being delayed, revised, or canceled before release … While rooted in good intentions to promote diversity and sensitivity, the movement has evolved into a moral panic that risks stifling creativity and narrowing the bounds of free expression… And what should you do when you come across a book you violently disagree with — even if it is Szetela’s own work? ‘Don’t burn it,’ he requests. ‘Maybe use it to fix that wobbly leg on your office chair or maybe do some erasure poetry with it’ Whatever you do, at least give others the chance to read it and make up their own minds.”
—Big Think

“Szetela critiques what he calls ‘the Sensitivity Era’ of publishing and the counterintuitive toll it’s taken on what books can get published, with racial essentialism being prized over nuanced characterizations that seek to fully articulate the complexities of American identity.”
—The Nation

“Adam Szetela, author of That Book Is Dangerous!, talked about his investigation into the rise of self-censorship in the publishing industry, which he argues is being negatively transformed by social media and the culture wars in the United States.”
— C-SPAN

“Adam Szetela–author of That Book is Dangerous!–lifts the lid on how the publishing industry itself became the enemy of literature.”
—Spiked

“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

“Compelling, illuminating, and engaging, Dangerous vividly documents the harms that arise absurdly from efforts to censor books and denounce authors, harms that must be resisted by each generation as citizens in a civilized society try to beat back, yet again, the endless presence of scolds and crusaders who would have the temerity to restrict what others can write or even read. The many examples in Dangerous are so baroque, and the fear within the publishing industry so apparent, that reading this book makes one shake one’s head in dismay. Yet, shining bright light on this problem may itself help us to resist it and to do better—which we can.”
—Nicholas A. Christakis, Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science, Yale University; author of Blueprint