Throughout history, tyrants, totalitarian states, church institutions, and democratic governments alike have banned books that challenged their assumptions or questioned their activities. Political suppression also occurs in the name of security and the safeguarding of official secrets and is often used as a weapon in larger cultural or political battles. Literature Suppressed on Political Grounds, Fourth Edition illustrates the extent and frequency of such censorship in nearly every form of writing. Entries include: Animal Farm (George Orwell) The Appointment (Herta Müller) Born on the Fourth of July (Ron Kovic) Burger's Daughter (Nadine Gordimer) Cancer Ward (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) Doctor Zhivago (Boris Pasternak) The Fugitive (Pramoedya Anata Toer) Girls of Riyadh (Rajaa Alsanea) The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift) The Hate U Give (Angie Thomas) The Jungle (Upton Sinclair) Kiss of the Spider Woman (Manuel Puig) Manifesto of the Communist Party (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels) Les Misérables (Victor Hugo) Mein Kampf (Adolf Hitler) Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut Jr.) Snow (Orhan Pamuk) The Struggle Is My Life (Nelson Mandela) The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien) The Vaněk Plays (Václav Havel) and more.

Throughout history, tyrants, totalitarian states, church institutions, and democratic governments alike have banned books that challenged their beliefs or questioned their activities. Political censorship was even applied to ancient Greek dramas during the Nazi occupation in 1942. Political suppression also occurs in the name of security and the safeguarding of official secrets, and is often used as a weapon in larger cultural or political battles. Such censorship has affected every form of writing. ""Literature Suppressed on Political Grounds, Revised Edition"" illustrates the extent and frequency of political censorship of many kinds of literature. The 10 entries new to this edition include works by Nobel Prize winners Wole Soyinka and Gao Xingjian, as well as works by Ha Jin and Edward Said. This edition also includes many updates to existing entries, such as ""Gulliver's Travels"". New and updated entries include: ""After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?"" (Jonathan C. Randal); ""Animal Farm"" (George Orwell); ""Born on the Fourth of July"" (Ron Kovic); ""Burger's Daughter"" (Nadine Gordimer); ""Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee"" (Dee Brown); ""Cancer Ward"" (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn); ""The Case for India"" (Will Durant); ""Did Six Million Really Die?"" (Richard E. Harwood); ""Doctor Zhivago"" (Boris Pasternak); ""El Senor President"" (Miguel Angel Asturias); ""The Fugitive"" (Pramoedya Ananta Toer); ""The Grapes of Wrath"" (John Steinbeck); ""Gulliver's Travels"" (Jonathan Swift); ""The Jungle"" (Upton Sinclair); ""Les Miserables"" (Victor Hugo); ""The Man Died"" (Wole Soyinka); ""Manifesto of the Communist Party"" (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels); ""Mein Kampf"" (Adolf Hitler); ""The Patriot"" (Hanoch Levin); ""The Prince"" (Machiavelli); ""Slaughterhouse-Five"" (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.); and ""The Struggle Is My Life"" (Nelson Mandela).

Literature Suppressed on Religious Grounds, Revised Edition profiles the censorship of many such essential works of literature. The entries new to this edition include extensive coverage of the Harry Potter series, which has been frequently banned in the United States on the grounds that it promotes witchcraft, as well as entries on two popular textbook series, The Witches by Roald Dahl, Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran, and more. Also included are updates to such entries as The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie and On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.

Books challenged for religious content include "The Bible," "The Age of Reason," and "The Talmud."

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, Fourth Edition profiles the censorship of many of these works. These include the frequently challenged Harry Potter series, which critics accuse of promoting witchcraft and anti-family themes, as well as Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy and Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. 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 Thirteen Reasons Why (Jay Asher) and more.

Presents summary and censorship accounts of books that have been banned throughout history for political, religious, sexual, and social reasons.

When Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata was banned from distribution through the mail (except for first class) in 1890, New York street vendors began selling it from pushcarts carrying large signs reading "Suppressed!" In 1961, the United States Supreme Court pondered whether D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover was lewd or literary. In 1969, the novel was required reading in many college literature courses. Changing sexual mores have moved many formerly forbidden books out of locked cabinets and into libraries and classrooms. Literature Suppressed on Sexual Grounds, Fourth Edition examines the issues underlying the suppression of more than 120 works deemed sexually obscene. Entries include: America: The Book (Jon Stewart) An American Tragedy (Theodore Dreiser) The Arabian Nights (Sir Richard Burton, trans.) The Art of Love (Ovid) The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison) Forever (Judy Blume) Gossip Girl series (Cecily von Ziegesar) How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (Julia Alvarez) Lady Chatterley's Lover (D.H. Lawrence) Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov) Looking for Alaska (John Green) Rabbit, Run (John Updike) Snow Falling on Cedars (David Guterson) Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison) This Boy's Life (Tobias Wolff) Ulysses (James Joyce) and more.