Five studies on book burning, biblioclasm and libricide -- some of the darkest chapters in literary history:


Matthew Fishburn - Burning Books (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

  ISBN: 9780230553286 | 240 pages | PDF

The Nazi burning of the books in 1933 was one of the most infamous political spectacles of the twentieth century. In Berlin and all over Germany, Nazi officials and students organized elaborate parades and bonfires to mark their embrace of HitlerΓÇÖs new government. Book burning has since become the symbol of any oppressive regime, and a modern taboo. As Heinrich Heine is often quoted: "Where one burns books, one will soon burn people." This original and provocative new work examines the impact of these fires, concentrating on the years between the Nazi outrages and the publication of Ray BradburyΓÇÖs Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, a period in which book burning took hold of the popular imagination. Much more than simply the study of a single shocking event, "Burning Books" explores how deeply embedded the myths of book burning have become in our cultural and literary history, and illustrates the enduring appeal of a great cleansing bonfire.


Rebecca Knuth - Burning Books and Leveling Libraries: Extremist Violence and Cultural Destruction (Praeger, 2006).

  ISBN: 9780275990077 | 248 pages | PDF

"Burning Books and Leveling Libraries" is structured in three parts. Part I is devoted to struggles by extremists over voice and power at the local level, where destruction of books and libraries is employed as a tactic of political or ethnic protest. Part II discusses the aftermath of power struggles in Germany, Afghanistan, and Cambodia, where the winners were utopians who purged libraries in efforts to purify their societies and maintain power. Part III examines the fate of libraries when there is war and a resulting power vacuum. The book concludes with a discussion of the events in Iraq in 2003, and the responsibility of American war strategists for the widespread pillaging that ensued after the toppling of Saddam Hussein. This case poignantly demonstrates the ease with which an oppressed people, given the collapse of civil restraints, may claim freedom as license for anarchy, construing it as the right to prevail, while ignoring its implicit mandate of social responsibility. Using military might to enforce ideals (in this case democracy and freedom) is futile, Knuth argues, if insufficient consideration is given to humanitarian, security, and cultural concerns.


Rebecca Knuth - Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century (Praeger, 2003).

  ISBN: 9780275980887 | 296 pages | PDF

Knuth examines ideologically driven and systemic destruction of books and libraries that paralleled acts of genocide in the 20th century. This book identifies the regime-sponsored, ideologically driven, and systemic destruction of books and libraries in the 20th century that often served as a prelude or accompaniment to the massive human tragedies that have characterized a most violent century. Using case studies of libricide committed by Nazis, Serbs in Bosnia, Iraqis in Kuwait, Maoists during the Cultural Revolution in China, and Chinese Communists in Tibet, Knuth argues that the destruction of books and libraries by authoritarian regimes was sparked by the same impulses toward negation that provoked acts of genocide or ethnocide.


Lucien X. Polastron - Books on Fire: The Destruction of Libraries throughout History (Inner Traditions, 2007).

  ISBN: 9781594771675 | 384 pages | PDF

A historical survey of the destruction of knowledge from ancient Babylon and China to modern times, "Books on Fire" traces the history of this destruction from the burning of the great library of Alexandria (on three separate occasions) and the libraries of the Chinese Qing Dynasty to more modern catastrophic losses such as those witnessed in Nazi-occupied Europe and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The author examines the causes for these disasters, the treasures that have been lost, and where the surviving books, if any, have ended up. His investigation also reveals a new danger facing libraries today with the digitalization of books threatening both the existence of the physical paper book and the very idea of reading for free. "Books on Fire" received the 2004 Societe des Gens de Lettres Prize for Nonfiction/History in Paris.


James Raven, ed. - Lost Libraries: The Destruction of Great Book Collections Since Antiquity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

  ISBN: 9781403921192 | 256 pages | PDF

This pioneering volume of essays explores the destruction of great libraries since ancient times and examines the intellectual, political and cultural consequences of loss. Fourteen original contributions, introduced by a major re-evaluative history of lost libraries, offer the first ever comparative discussion of the greatest catastrophes in book history from Mesopotamia and Alexandria to the dispersal of monastic and monarchical book collections, the Nazi destruction of Jewish libraries, and the recent horrifying pillage and burning in Tibet, Bosnia and Iraq.