Forbidden Books

Banned Books

In many ways this section is a social experiment to see how many people would click on this link when expressly told not to. It is also, in some ways a commentary on how saying that something is forbidden automatically makes it more interesting. There are many books which have been banned or forbidden over the ages. The Catholic Church used to maintain a list of banned books, The Index Librorum Prohibitorum, ("List of Prohibited Books") which the Catholic Church censored for being a danger to itself and the faith of its members. Conversely the Church would also designate approved books with the Latin phrase "Nihil Obstat" which was essentially a mark of assurance that the book did not contain any heretical or otherwise unapproved content. The Catholic Church's list of prohibited books was last updated in 1948. Some notable authors on the forbidden list include most major Western philosophers, Honoré de Balzac, John Calvin, and Giacomo Casanova. Books have been banned at different times for different reasons and the reason for their banning often has a lot to say about the society that forbids them. for example, Nazi Germany banned and burned books by intellectuals that espoused democracy, communism, or were Jewish or homosexual. In more recent times, books such as Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" and books dealing with evolution have been banned by school boards in the United States. I will be adding a list of banned and forbidden books in the near future.