Burning Books

Based on - -www1.chaffey.edu/collegebook/Banned

%20Books.ppt

Who burns books?!

Everyone/Anyone…can!

In 213 BC, all Confucian books were burned save one copy of each which was kept in the Chinese State Library. Destroying literature and persecuting Confucians was an extension of the original plans to consolidate the Qin dynasty composed by Shi Huang (246-210 BC). They were carried out further by Prime Minister Li Si (208 BC).

Romans practiced book burning. Tiberius enacted a policy of burning books which was criticized by the Elder Seneca.

Tiberius not only burned books but had authors executed.

Writers such as Giordono Bruno, in 1600, and Lucilio Vanini, 1619, were burned along with their works.

In their zeal to Christianize the New World, missionaries destroyed almost all of the Indians' books.

One way the Nazis cleansed the country of "un-German" thoughts was by burning books.

On June 1, 1981, police officers and government supporters of Sri Lanka set fire to the Jaffna Library. “In many people’s minds, the fire ignited the ethnic hatred that had been brewing for decades between this island’s Buddhist Sinhalese majority and thr Hindu Tamil minority.”

An hour after sundown on August 25, 1992, Serbian militia in the hills surrounding Sarajevo, began firing shells at the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina in an effort to erase Bosnia’s multiethnic cultural heritage

10 % of the library’s collection was lost:– 1.5 million volumes – 4,000 rare books – 478 bound manuscripts – 100 years of Bosnian newspapers and journals– 2 centuries worth of of photographs depicting the country’s

cultural and political life– Posters– Musical scores

"Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings." (German: "Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.")―Heinrich Heine, from his play Almansor (1821)

So when someone tries to say, “what’s good for me is good for you”…there’s likely to be problems…

Bradbury’s work describes the impact of censorship and forced conformity on a group of people living in a future society where books are forbidden and burned.

Bradbury’s classic on book burning was on the reading list for several English classes in Foxworth, Mississippi.

A parent complained to the superintendent about the use of the phrase “God damn” in the book and the book was removed from the required reading list.

Don't think you're going to conceal faults by Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as any document does not every book, as long as any document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.be the only censorship.

How will we defeat communism unless we know How will we defeat communism unless we know what it is, what it teaches, and why does it have what it is, what it teaches, and why does it have such an appeal for men, why are such an appeal for men, why are so many many people swearing allegiance to it? It's almost a people swearing allegiance to it? It's almost a religion, albeit one of the nether regions.religion, albeit one of the nether regions.

And we have got to fight it with something better, not try to conceal the thinking of our own people. They are part of America. And even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they're accessible to others is unquestioned, or it's not America.

~Dwight David Eisenhower