Burning Books

by Haig A. Bosmajian

For over 2000 years, book burners have laid their torches to millions of books condemned as heretical, blasphemous, immoral, obscene, subversive or seditious. Books have been reduced to ashes in church yards, college yards, school furnaces, public squares and city streets. The goals of the book burners have been to extirpate history, to intimidate and stamp out opposition, to create solidarity, and to cleanse society of controversial ideas. Too often, book burning foreshadows violence against those who originated or shared the ideas. This work provides a detailed account of book burning worldwide over the past 2000 years. (Book burning is meant literally, not as a figurative reference to book banning .) The book burners are identified, along with the works they deliberately set aflame. An important aspect of this study is its examination of the metaphoric language that "justified" the destruction; books being burned were “tares,” “pestilence,” “plagues,” “cancers,” and “poison.” Such language is a central part to the control the burners hope to exercise over those who might otherwise read the books and become part of the exchange of ideas. Also considered is the primeval pull of the book burning ritual, which in its simplicity leads to the destruction of ideas and the uniformity of thought most often associated with totalitarian regimes.

233 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2005

About the author

Haig Aram Bosmajian was an author, lecturer, and professor, who received the 1983 Orwell Award for his book The Language of Oppression (1974). Haig Bosmajian received a PhD in 1960 from Stanford University. His work has explored rhetoric and the freedom of speech.[2] Bosmajian was professor emeritus at the University of Washington, in the Speech/Communications Department, where he taught since 1965. He was married for 57 years to Hamida Bosmajian, also a published author and a professor at nearby Seattle University.

Haig and Hamida Bosmajian wrote the textbook, The Rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement (1969), which has been published as a student textbook to analyze strategies of rhetoric.

Reviews

[Maher Battuti · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very informative book that covers the subject of this hateful crime against culture. It traces the burning of books since old times to our 21 st Century. We see that all kinds of books were targeted, even sacred books like the Bible, the Qura'n, and all other religious books.Many literary books that have been burned in one time, are considered classics in other times: Ulysses, Lady Chatterley's Lover, The Rainbow, Tropic of Cancer...
The book ends with a note of trying to burn 1001 Nights in Egypt at the beginning of the new Century....