
One of those honored books is Nobel Laureate John Steinbeck’s 1939 bestseller The Grapes of Wrath.
In Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s the Grapes of Wrath, Rick Wartzman (The King of California: J.G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire) artfully recounts the first dramatic desecration in Kern County, Calif., where plutocrat W.B. Bill Camp directed a public burning in downtown Bakersfield, blustering: We are angry, not because we were attacked but because we were attacked by a book obscene in the extreme sense of the word. The heroine of this sad chapter of American historythen, as nowwas a librarian, Gretchen Knief, who wisely responded: If that book is banned today, what book will be banned tomorrow?
Yes, it can happen here.