Most Interesting Books of 2006
Burning Books
by Haig Bosmajian
Published by McFarland & Company
Burning books describes the flagrant history of book burning, from ancient times to the present day. Books have been burned --- by the church, by the state, by the moralists --- because they were seen to be blasphemous and heretical, seditious and subversive, or immoral and obscene. In the year 2006, we learn, books were burned in China, Indonesia, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, India, and the United States. Bosmajian quotes the German poet-dramatist Heinrich Heine, who wrote (in his play, Almansor): "Where men burn books, they will burn people in the end."
— Michael Pastore
