This book is not only an engrossing read, but is a very badly needed warning to those of us wondering why today's children often show a marked disinterest in reading. Children forced to read dull, uninspiring works that do not speak to them will have no cause to love reading. Inoffensive or no, literature possessing or truth, love, or beauty should never be disallowed of our children.

Although literacy must begin at home, Ravitch shows that pressure groups have undeniably worsened that quality of both literature and history in schools. Taking the position of a social seer of sorts, neither left or right of center, Ravitch shows how censorship both for secular and religious reasons is wrong. Ravitch equally condemns the civil rights leader who despises Huckleberry Finn for it's racial insensitivity as she does the Christian fundementalist objecting to Huxley's Brave New World.

If you tire of having American heroes you grew up with unrecognizably changed or cut out of history books, if you are tired of your children being forced to read dull, inane literature utilized solely for it's inoffensive nature, and if you think that censorship, be it in the guise of religious morality or civil rights is wrong, then you must read this book. We cannot allow ourselves to continue on to a world of vanilla banality.