If Plato Were Alive Today, Would He Try to Ban Harry Potter?

In Bad For You, coming on January 7th from Henry Holt, authors Kevin C. Pyle and Scott Cunningham expose the long-standing campaign against fun for what it really is: a bunch of anxious adults grasping at straws, ignoring scientific data, and blindly yearning for the good old days that never were.

In this timely excerpt, Pyle and Cunningham look at the practice of banning and burning stories, reaching from Harry Potter to fairy tales in the first century A.D. to Plato in Athens B.C.

Banned Books Week 2013 is being celebrated from Sept. 22 to the 28; further information on Banned and Frequently Challenged Books is available from the American Library Association.