Ideas in Flames

Ideas in Flames continues where Richard Ovenden’s Burning Books: A History of Knowledge under Attack (2020) left off. It details worldwide efforts to destroy or ban books, centering primarily on Afghanistan and the United States. Through stirring portraits of the destroyers, as well as those under threat, Ovenden offers a rousing defense of the importance of literature and libraries. It is a defense that one would hope was unnecessary in the twenty-first century. The fact that it is not makes this book all the more important.