Description

That Book is Dangerous! How Moral Panic, Social Media and the Culture Wars are Remaking Publishing by Adam Szetela

Paperback – MIT Press – Jun 2026 – 288 Pages

In the past decade and a half, there is no doubt that American literature, especially children’s and YA literature, has become more inclusive—an important gain for social justice and minority representation. However, the movement for more diverse and sensitive books has also resulted in unintended and disastrous outcomes. In That Book Is Dangerous!, Adam Szetela investigates how well-intentioned and often successful efforts to diversify American literature have also produced serious problems for literary freedom. While progressives are correct to be focused on the Right’s attempts at legislative censorship, Szetela argues, what is happening on the Left should be equally, if not more, disturbing, given the Left’s greater influence inside publishing itself.

The author draws on interviews with presidents and vice presidents at the Big Five publishers, literary agents at the most prestigious agencies, award-winning authors, editors, marketers, sensitivity readers, and other industry professionals to examine the new publishing landscape. What he finds is mandatory sensitivity reads, morality clauses in author contracts, even censorship of “dangerous” books in the name of antiracism, feminism, and other forms of social justice. These changes to acquisition practices, editing policies, and other aspects of literary culture are a direct outgrowth of the culture of public outcries on Twitter, Goodreads, Change.org, and other online platforms, where users accuse authors—justifiably or not—of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other transgressions. But rather than genuinely address the economic inequities of literary production, the author shows, this current moral crusade over literature serves only to entrench the status quo. “While the Right is remaking the world in its image,” he writes, “the Left is standing in a circular firing squad.”