Review of Chain of Ideas, by Ibram X. Kendi

Audiobooks, Current Issues, History, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Chain of Ideas

The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age

by Ibram X. Kendi
read by the author

Books on Tape, 2026. 20 hours.
One World, 2026. 550 pages.
Review written October 19, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

I checked out the audiobook version of this book, but I had some other audiobooks to listen to first, and I did not finish the book before the loan period of 21 days was up. I was impressed with the book, but the amount of information was a little overwhelming. I knew I’d want a copy of the book to write a review, so I decided to finish up by checking out the print version and reading that.

This book is a massive work of history. The author had so many notes, he put them on the internet instead of in the book – and it’s still 550 pages long.

This book is about the global spread of “great replacement theory.”

Great replacement theory can be defined as a political theory that powerful elites are enabling peoples of color to steal the lives, livelihoods, cultures, electoral power, and freedoms of White people, who now need authoritarian protection.

Great replacement theory is not only a racist and antisemitic idea. Like a virus, Camus’s great replacement theory has mutated all over the world into sexist, ethnocentric, homophobic, transphobic, and especially Islamophobic variants. Appealing to men, ethnic majorities, heterosexual and cisgender people, and Jews and Christians (usually through a mythical “Judeo-Christian” construct), great replacement theories warn that women, queer and trans people, ethnic minorities, and Muslims are coming to take their lives, livelihoods, cultures, electoral power, and freedom: Feminists purportedly dominating men in South Korea. Transgender young people, who comprise less than 0.002 percent of collegiate athletes, said to be taking over sports in the United States. Albanians supposedly boxing out Macedonians in North Macedonia. Sub-Saharan Black Africans apparently displacing Brown Arabs in Tunisia. Muslims professedly terrorizing Hindus in India. Roma people apparently taking out non-Roma people in Central Europe. Homosexuals allegedly “grooming” heterosexuals in Russia. Even “evil” gangs ostensibly replacing “the good people” in El Salvador. Wherever there are lines between privileged and disadvantaged groups, between groups in the majority and the minority, new mutations of great replacement theory seem to arise.

It disturbed me how global this sweep of ideas has become. I was reading Kristen Kobes Du Mez’s book Jesus and John Wayne during the same time period I was listening to this book, and there were times when they talked about the exact same thing, to the point where it felt repetitive and I couldn’t remember which author had said which idea when. But Jesus and John Wayne talks about white Evangelicalism and the rise of Christian Nationalism in the United States. This book is about global politics.

The Chain of Ideas referred to in the title is about a series of linked political ideas that bring great replacement theory to authoritarian politics. And Ibram X. Kendi shows how the ideas in the chain have their roots in Naziism. Here’s how the book is organized:

There are ten links in the chain of ideas. Each of the ten sections in Chain of Ideas tells the story of a single idea, set in a different nation, featuring a different great replacement politician as its main character, while chronologically narrating periods of electoral growth for great replacement parties. The sections connect these political ideas to their historical antecedents, making Chain of Ideas transnational and transhistorical. The seeds of great replacement theory emerged at the end of the nineteenth century “when the establishment of modern nationalism in the West concurred with the high days of European colonialism and imperialism,” sociologists Sarah Bracke and Luis Manuel Hernandez Aguilar explain. Enslavers, colonizers, eugenicists, fascists, segregationists, dictators, apartheid officials, and – most of all – Nazis all expressed earlier versions of these same ten ideas, or of great replacement theory.

The book is 550 pages and 20 hours long, so I can’t give as detailed a picture as I’d like. But let me give the section headings so you know what the ten ideas are in the chain.

Link 1: “Privileged groups lose out as disadvantaged groups gain.”

This is the basic great replacement idea. This section features Marine Le Pen in France.

Link 2: “Inequity data should be ignored.”

The whole great replacement idea is based on perceptions, not on facts. This section features Viktor Orban of Hungary.

Link 3: “Bigotry is prejudice and interpersonal discrimination.”

Great replacement theorists don’t want you talking about racist or bigoted systems. This section features José Antonio Kast of Chile.

Link 4: “Bigotry against historically disadvantaged groups is over.”

This idea teaches that we have gotten past bigotry and racism. This section features Nigel Farage of the United Kingdom.

Link 5: “Bigotry against privileged groups is on the rise.”

Make the privileged feel discriminated against, especially if any effort is made to adjust for historical inequities. This section features Geert Wilders of the Netherlands.

Link 6: “Majority and privileged groups are indigenous to the nation.”

This is the idea that “real Americans,” or the indigenous people in other countries are White folks, or precisely the groups with the most power. This section features Alice Weidel of Germany.

Link 7: “Fight for freedom as patriots, like the nation’s founders.”

Because privileged groups are the real patriots, fighting for their privileges is patriotic. This section features Pierre Poilievre of Canada.

Link 8: “Stand in the legacy of antislavery, anticolonialism, civil rights activism, and antifascism.

See how the ideas are linked? Because fighting for privileged groups is the real patriotism, they are in the noble legacy of all who have fought for justice. The politician featured in this section is Giorgia Meloni of Italy.

Link 9: “Insurrections against democracy protect the nation.”

This is how you get the firm belief of the J6ers that they were protecting the country. This section featured Nayib Bukele of El Salvador.

Link 10: “Fight for privileges provided by dictators instead of power provided by democracy.”

And so we see how great replacement theory has led us through this chain of ideas to authoritarianism. The politician featured in this section is Vladimir Putin of Russia.

You’ll notice that Donald Trump doesn’t get a section to himself. Rest assured that he is mentioned in every section. But this isn’t a book merely about the United States. I learned much about what’s going on in the rest of the world that I didn’t particularly want to know.

I hope this all has intrigued you enough to pick up the book or place a hold for the audiobook. There’s much information provided explaining and expanding on each link in the chain, especially giving examples relating to the featured politicians. I did like that the chapters are short. In the print book, that helps me grasp the ideas. (In the audiobook, it just barrels through chapters quickly; in print I can do a chapter a day and have an amount I can digest.)

Opening your eyes to underlying ideas is a good way to combat them. I hope this book will reach a wide audience.

chainofideasbook.com
ibramxkendi.com
oneworldlit.com

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Review of Unclobber, by Colby Martin

Christian, Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Unclobber

Rethinking our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality

by Colby Martin

Westminster John Knox Press, 2022. 218 pages.
Review written August 6, 2026, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review

I’ve owned this book for quite some time, and since I am attending Wild Goose Festival this coming September, and the author will be there – I wanted to make sure I finally got it read.

This book would have been helpful to me several years ago when I was thinking through the Bible’s teachings on homosexuality. As it is, I am so glad this resource exists.

My background is similar to Colby Martin’s – I grew up a conservative evangelical, and my life was about my faith. I did not become a pastor – because I was a woman, so of course not. He was a pastor at a large evangelical church, so when he started questioning his church’s blanket condemnation of gay people, he got fired.

This book tells about his journey. And in alternating chapters, he talks about the six “Clobber” passages in the Bible that are used to condemn homosexual people. And he makes a strong case that modern day readers are taking them out of context and not interpreting them in a legitimate way.

He didn’t come to this because of anybody in his life who was gay. He began researching the topic because it seemed like a discrimination issue to not allow same-sex couples to get married, whether or not you think it’s sinful.

I appreciate his approach, because I, too, felt in my heart that it wasn’t right to condemn same-sex couples, but wasn’t sure how to square that with the Bible. I like the way he looks at each passage and lays out the case that they are being misused.

I am at least twenty years older than Colby Martin, and this wasn’t as big an issue (or rather one I could ignore) in the churches I attended when I was young. As an adult, I gradually changed my way of thinking with the help of books like God Believes in Love, by Gene Robinson, and Paul Among the People, by Sarah Ruden.

I didn’t think it affected me, but when Caitlin Jenner came out as transgender, I thought it through and realized that I didn’t believe for a second that’s contrary to Scripture. I was glad I thought it through, because it wasn’t long after that when my own adult child came out as transgender. And a few years later, my home church decided to make it part of their church constitution that LGBTQ people are sinning. I wrote a whole blog series about why I think churches should welcome LGBTQ people, especially transgender people. I called it Transcending. I used some ideas from Austen Hartke’s, a transgender pastor’s, wonderful book, Transforming. My emphasis is similar to Colby Martin’s here. What does the Bible have to say about transgender people?

All of this ties in with a book I recently reviewed, Better Ways to Read the Bible, by Zack Lambert. If you are interpreting the Bible so it can be used as a weapon to clobber people, rather than to build people up with love, joy, peace, and the other fruit of the Spirit – then something is wrong with your interpretation. Colby Martin shows us how we can rightly divide the word of truth and also be more loving people.

colbymartinonline.com

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Review of The Crooked Places Made Straight, by Raphael G. Warnock

Christian, Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Crooked Places Made Straight

Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America

by Raphael G. Warnock

Penguin Press, 2026. 187 pages.
Review written July 27, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

I’m going to list this book by the senator from Georgia who is also a pastor with Christian books, but I could just as well put it in the Current Issues section (and that’s where it is on the library shelves). Because yes, Raphael Warnock talks about political issues, but they are also moral issues and issues the Bible speaks to.

This book looks at America as a great cathedral, 250 years into its construction. But like a cathedral, there’s still plenty of work to do. He uses verses from Isaiah to inspire, notably the one in the title, making crooked places straight.

He takes a more specific look at six crooked places that we need to work toward straightening: poverty, voting rights, money in politics, mass incarceration, gun violence, and climate change – and how the initial impacts are hitting minorities the hardest. All of these discussions come from a place of deep faith.

Here’s where he discusses voting rights:

We are in a rough place right now, fighting to save our fragile democracy. As a man of faith, I often say that I believe democracy is the political enactment of a spiritual idea. It is the notion that each of us has within us a spark of the divine. Therefore, we ought to have a vote and a voice in the direction of our country and our destiny within it.

He explains his use of Isaiah’s writings to write a political book.

Isaiah’s words are so beautiful, so sublime, that they cut right through the hopelessness of a people awash in despair. How we need this kind of bold vision in a moment like our own! The truth is that the partisan and petty rhetoric of politics today is simply too puny a language for the magnitude of the problems we face. Instead, I urge us to look to Isaiah as a lens through which to view the problems that confront us and the possibilities within and around us. The goal of this book is to lay out that vision clearly so that we can work together to build the America that we want to see.

So despite confronting some difficult problems in America today, Senator Warnock writes a book of hope and vision. He makes the reader want to play our part in building a grand and beautiful cathedral formed by “we, the people.” I hope many will read it and be motivated to take action.

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Review of Rebels, Robbers, and Radicals, by Teri Kanefield

Children's Nonfiction Review, Current Issues, History, Starred Review 0

Rebels, Robbers, and Radicals

The Story of the Bill of Rights

by Teri Kanefield

Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2025. 216 pages.
Review written March 4, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

First, a note that this is not picture book nonfiction. I’ll put it on the Children’s Nonfiction page, but this is targeted to middle school and upper elementary students who can read longer material.

I love Teri Kanefield’s legal writing. Her calm voice on her blog is long where I’ve gone to understand present-day legal issues. So of course I checked out this book for children on the Bill of Rights.

And I’d had no idea how interesting that topic could be. She explains her approach at the back of the book:

I hit on the idea of presenting the material the way the law is presented to law students – through actual court cases. The case method avoids abstract principles and tedious explanations. Instead, the law is presented through the stories and struggles of actual people. The principles and laws are woven into the fabric of the case the way morals are woven into fables.

Stories of real people involved in real struggles are always livelier than dry explanations, particularly when those stories include bank robbers like Bonnie and Clyde, high school students challenging violations of their rights, rebels who refuse to obey laws they believe to be unjust, and people considered radical because they want to entirely remake the government. The statement “you have the right to a jury trial” will have little relevance to most people. But when we read about the Zenger trial and see that juries were devised to guard against the kind of tyranny that early Americans experienced under British rule, the right to a jury takes on a real-world meaning.

Teri Kanefield achieves these goals in a book that’s interesting every step of the way. She goes through each one of the first ten amendments and gives examples showing how the interpretation of each amendment affected people’s lives – and still affect them today. She talks about how things have changed over time, about the conflict between states’ rights and federal rights, and about things like how the “right to privacy” isn’t mentioned in the Constitution, and how it’s a question of the ninth amendment whether the federal government can rule on that.

Although this book is completely suitable for upper elementary age readers, I can testify that it’s great reading for adults, too. As always with Teri’s writing, I learned things about the law of our land that I hadn’t known I didn’t know.

terikanefield.com

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Review of Who Is Government? edited by Michael Lewis

Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Who Is Government?

The Untold Story of Public Service

edited by Michael Lewis
read by the authors

Books on Tape, 2025. 6 hours, 43 minutes.
Review written February 19, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I listened to this audiobook because the book was on President Obama’s Summer 2025 Reading List. Listening to the audiobook was especially nice because the author of each essay read their own work, and W. Kamau Bell included audio interviews from his research.

This book is about public servants – about people who work for the federal government and the amazing work they do. I live in northern Virginia and many of my friends do awesome work for the government – so I was not surprised. It’s also true that several of my friends had to leave their jobs after Trump devastated the federal work force, so I did find myself wondering how many of the amazing people featured in this book are still employed, doing good for the country and the world.

The premise of the book is to find outstanding federal employees and highlight the good work they do, unbeknownst to most of the country. Michael Lewis asked some great writers to participate, and besides two essays from him, this book includes pieces from Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, John Lanchester, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Vowell, and W. Kamau Bell.

Some examples of the stories I found super interesting (well, they were all really interesting) were the guy who saved tens of thousands of lives by changing mining regulations and putting an end to roof collapses in coal mines, and the IRS agent who brought down an international human trafficking ring (Can we put him on the Epstein case?), brought a drug lord to justice, and much more. One chapter wasn’t about any one person, but was about the Consumer Price Index – and the tremendous amount of work that goes into it and how important it is. Of course as a librarian, I was especially interested in the chapter that highlighted a worker at the National Archives.

This book can maybe help us recover from the devastation in our government post-Trump? It presents an uplifting vision of government that does good work, that takes care of important work that doesn’t make anyone a profit but touches lives in vitally important ways. This is what – and who – government is supposed to be.

If you live in the United States, I highly recommend this book to be informed about amazing things your government is doing – but also to hear some fascinating stories of good people doing good work.

michaellewiswrites.com

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Review of The Sirens’ Call, by Chris Hayes

Audiobooks, Current Issues, Nonfiction Review 0

The Sirens’ Call

How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource

by Chris Hayes
read by the author

Books on Tape, 2025. 8 hours, 55 minutes.
Review written January 15, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This is a book about attention and the Attention Economy. Sirens were developed to seize our attention. And Odysseus resisted the sirens of mythology only by being tied to a mast. Today the world has found ways to produce sirens that seize our attention – and we carry them around in our pockets.

At first, I expected a version of “Our attention spans are much shorter because we use our phones so much.” But I got a much more thoughtful, much more nuanced work. Chris Hayes kept talking about himself as being “in the attention business” as a host for MSNBC. And he explores far more aspects of attention than I had even realized existed – and how things have changed over time.

Did you know that when cars were first built, people thought having a radio would be too distracting? Or that spam (with different names) has been a problem for centuries – including too many posters on the streets of Paris? Or that google started as a way to save people time by getting pertinent search results – which gave them people’s time and attention – which they sold to advertisers = which makes their search results less pertinent?

I did think it was funny that while he talked about people commonly watching more than one thing at a time (picture in picture or simply looking at one’s phone while watching TV), he never mentioned listening to audiobooks while doing other things. So it was amusing that I listened to this entire book while doing other things that didn’t require much brain power – driving, cleaning, and other mechanical tasks. Attention is a limited resource, and there are more things clamoring for it than ever.

And yes, he did discuss Donald Trump’s particular skill at gaining attention. Most politicians want attention, but also want to be liked. Donald Trump seems to only care about the attention part of that. And he’s very good at getting it.

It was also interesting to hear from a newscaster’s perspective that they feel like they are chasing attention rather than controlling it. It’s common to blame the media for what people have heard about, but to a large extent they are chasing attention themselves. If they talk about boring things, no one will listen to them, after all.

He also contrasted today’s sound bite world with the Lincoln-Douglass debates, where the candidates each talked for 90 minutes on substantive issues. Audiences wouldn’t stand for that today even if a person existed who could talk about issues that long.

I never feel like I do a good job summarizing nonfiction audiobooks, because I can’t refer back to the points made. However, this one explored all kinds of aspects of attention, put everything into historical context, and helped me notice when people are trying to manipulate my attention. All done in an interesting way. I didn’t regret giving the book, if not my full attention, at least a large portion of my attention while I was doing other boring things.

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Review of Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Abundance

by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
read by the authors

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025. 7 hours, 15 minutes.
Review written December 27, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2025 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #4 More Nonfiction

I read this book from the recommendation on President Obama’s list, and I love remembering that once we had a president who read such thoughtful works. Maybe some day we will again! (Confession: I’ve read two of the novels from the list, and they were too literary for me. So in a way, I was glad to appreciate this one – haven’t completely lost my ability to grasp difficult reading.)

I like the approach this book takes, starting in the introduction by giving us a vision of what abundance might look like thirty years from now. What would we hope the lives of our children and grandchildren would look like if they have abundance?

Then the bulk of the book talks about how we might get there – some things we’ve done well in the past, and some course corrections we should make.

And very much of the book is about government and public policy. Because it’s about building and innovation – and government already has its hands in those things. They show that in some areas, government regulations have proliferated in a way that makes us unable to respond to immediate needs. But they also give examples where governments helped things come together to achieve greatness – two examples are the Moonshot and Operation Warp Speed – the Covid vaccine.

This book isn’t about one party or the other – it shows blind spots on both sides – but has many suggestions for how our country can foster innovation and do great things – and work toward a future of abundance for our entire population.

This is one that I could probably give a better review if I hadn’t listened to the audiobook and had the book in front of me – I could quote the excellent points made. (However, if I’d tried to get the print book read, it wouldn’t have happened any time soon, so it’s just as well.) So let me tell you that the book gives an in-depth look on the attitudes and values (rather than necessarily the policies) that we need to foster to build an abundant future.

I very much hope there are still politicians who read books – from local to state to federal – and that many of those will consider the ideas found in this book, and whether the laws and regulations they are responsible for help or hinder that abundant future.

derekthompson.org

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Review of Everything Is Tuberculosis, by John Green

Current Issues, History, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Everything Is Tuberculosis

The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

by John Green

Crash Course Books (Penguin Random House), 2025. 198 pages.
Review written June 9, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

I am a fan of John Green’s turning to writing nonfiction. He thinks long and hard about so many aspects of his topic. The catch is that it’s hard to decide where to put this review. History? It’s full of that, but I put most adult History nonfiction in “True Stories” – which it also has. Musings? There’s plenty of thinking about what tuberculosis means to us humans and how things got that way. But I think I’ll settle for “Current Issues” – because ultimately the whole book shows us that we can choose to fight tuberculosis – or let it mutate and get more drug resistant and increase the number of people it kills every year.

I was a little bit familiar with the problem of drug-resistant tuberculosis spreading in poor communities because of having read Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, an amazing book that John Green refers to multiple times. This book is in that tradition – but honestly more readable and digestible. My theory is that John Green being a young adult novelist first is how that happened. The result is a compelling history of tuberculosis and humans’ relationship with it in a book that never lags.

John Green goes back in history – tuberculosis has plagued humans for thousands of years and has killed more people than any other disease – and shows us how attitudes toward the disease have changed, and tells us about the quest for a cure. Along the way, he interweaves the story of Henry, a teen in Sierra Leone who had been suffering from tuberculosis for years.

And yes, the story of tuberculosis is the story of prejudice. In years before the cure, many believed that non-white people didn’t get tuberculosis.

In Europe and the U.S., most white doctors believed that phthisis – as it was inherited by those with great sensitivity and intelligence – could only affect white people, and it was sometimes known as “The White Man’s Plague.” One American doctor, for instance, called it, “a disease of the master race not of the slave race.”. . .

Acknowledging that consumption was common among enslaved, colonized, and marginalized people would have undermined not just a theory of disease, but also the project of colonialism itself.

Now, though, tuberculosis is much more of a problem where there is poverty. Inflated drug prices keep poorer countries from using the most effective medication – which results in more drug resistant strains of tuberculosis, and may one day be everyone’s undoing.

My summary, though, isn’t nearly as interesting as John Green’s narratives, showing how everything is interrelated, and how tuberculosis has affected every aspect of human civilization. In the present, millions still die from tuberculosis every year – even though we have effective cures. This book explores all the sides of why that happens and gives us ideas for helping to stop it and eradicate TB once and for all.

johngreenbooks.com
tbfighters.org
youtube.com/@Tuberculosis-l1jSurvivorHenry

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Review of Killer Underwear Invasion! by Elise Gravel

Children's Nonfiction Review, Current Issues, Graphic Novel, History, Humorous, Starred Review 0

Killer Underwear Invasion!

How to Spot Fake News, Disinformation & Conspiracy Theories

by Elise Gravel

Chronicle Books, 2022. 104 pages.
Review written December 22, 2022, from a library book.
Starred Review

Killer Underwear Invasion! is a just-about-perfect graphic novel explanation for kids about fake news, how to watch for it, and why it’s harmful. The examples are silly, which makes the book a lot of fun, but they’re also presented in a way that reminds the reader of real-life examples.

After an explanation of what fake news and disinformation are, we get lots of reasons why people would make them up: To make money, to get famous, to spread beliefs, to gain power, and to get other people to share information on social media (which is generally to make money). There are funny examples with silly characters for each one.

Then we’re told that fake news can be very dangerous.

Let’s say Galbinus wants to try to convince you to take a remedy that doesn’t work — or might even harm you.

“You can cure every disease by drinking shampoo!*”

[Click here to buy shampoo!]

*Please don’t try this at home.

Of course, doctors and scientists will say. . .

“No, no, no! DO NOT drink shampoo! It’s dangerous! It doesn’t cure anything!”

So Galbinus might start writing articles attacking doctors.

“ALL DOCTORS ARE EVIL LIARS!”

“THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO FEEL BETTER!”

You get the idea! The next example is a big factory that dumps toxic chemicals in the ocean. They get a fake expert to write an article saying that pollution doesn’t exist.

Then we’ve got a politician who claims his opponent is bad because he pinches puppies. For all of these examples, it shows many people believing the fake news.

And then the chapter on conspiracy theories pulls all of these silly stories together. It shows some fake news going viral and then people putting stories together and believing that doctors and the political candidate have sent robot-scorpions into the sewers to pinch your puppies.

All this silliness aside, the book brings things around by looking at why people believe fake news, and how we can guard against it, with ten practical steps.

This does include a nice shout-out to librarians:

Okay, so can I really trust anyone?

Well, it can be difficult to decide who to trust. If you’re not sure if you can trust a source, ask a librarian.

Librarians are trained to help you find reliable information.

It all adds up to an informative, fun, and entertaining book about an important and timely subject. It was fun for me to read, even already knowing a lot about the topic.

elisegravel.com
chroniclekids.com

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Review of That Librarian, by Amanda Jones

Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

That Librarian

The Fight Against Book Banning in America

by Amanda Jones

Bloomsbury, 2024. 269 pages.
Review written February 22, 2025, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review

That Librarian is Amanda Jones’ own story about speaking up against censorship in a meeting of her local public library board – and then relentlessly being hounded and harassed online afterward. She is a middle school librarian herself, and has won multiple awards for her work. And that fueled the flame of defamation, slander, and even death threats – the bullies said that because she’s against book bans, that makes her a purveyor of pornography to children.

I’d like to think that this is a problem mainly in red states. And, yes, the county where I work as a librarian consistently votes blue. But in view of things that have happened in the first month of the new administration, I have to take seriously this paragraph from page 5 of Project 2025:

Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual
liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.

No, I don’t believe in giving pornography to children, and neither does Amanda Jones. But they’re defining pornography as any book that acknowledges that transgender people exist. Anything that portrays same-sex couples as having loving relationships. And if you allow those books – books that resonate with citizens in our communities, books about the loving families that reside there, books that help the marginalized feel seen – the bullies label you as a sex offender – which is what they did to Amanda Jones.

Her original speech at the library board meeting didn’t mention any specific books, nor were any mentioned by the library board – but because she spoke up against book banning, she was accused of being a danger to children and wanting to put books about sex into the hands of children. This about someone who has devoted her life to serving children.

Amanda made the difficult choice to sue the main instigators for defamation. The initial case was dismissed on the grounds that she’s a “public figure,” which seems silly, since she spoke in that meeting as a parent and as a member of the community. And I just looked up on google, and after two appeals, the Louisiana Supreme Court vacated the lower court’s decision, so her case will go forward. She’s not even suing them for damages. All she’s asking for is $1 and an apology – because you don’t get to make up lies about someone and try to destroy their life.

So all that is good news, and this book gives visibility to the more and more pervasive problem of people trying to restrict their public library’s collections to only books that they think are okay. Yes, there are books in the public library that I wouldn’t give to my own children when they were young. But that doesn’t mean I should keep your children from reading them. Here’s how Amanda Jones puts it:

Freedom and parental rights are a rallying cry, but the same people who say this are trying to take away the rights of young adult readers, their parents, and others. The people who say they are for small government are pushing governmental control over what we the people have access to, and not just children. We should ALL want the freedom to read what we want to read and have access to reading materials from a variety of viewpoints. Protecting our libraries is exactly how we do that. The attack on librarians and libraries is shameful and something everyone should fear. Once they destroy our libraries and schools, what will be next? Where will it end? We must continue to speak up. That’s all we can really do. We must stand up for what is right and good, regardless of what is said about us. The book banners, the people who attacked me for daring to disagree with them, wanted to silence me. I didn’t let them. I did the opposite. For the past year, I have agreed to almost every interview requested of me to help spread the word across the nation about what is happening in our libraries and to librarians. It has been exhausting, but necessary. I will continue to speak out when asked. We have to not just for the sake of libraries but for real freedom. Everyone who can needs to speak out on behalfof those who cannot. People who are rational need to take a stand against the irrational. We must do so with grace and truth, never stooping to the tactics the pro-censors use. We are the real patriots.

I do highly recommend this book to everyone to help understand those who are attacking public libraries and our first amendment rights. There’s a chapter at the end about what you can do in your own community to support your own libraries.

Thank you, Amanda Jones, for speaking up for the freedom to read!

No one on the right side of history has ever been on the side of censorship and hiding books.

bloomsbury.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/that_librarian.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?