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Censorship and the American Library: The American Library Association's Response to Threats to Intellectual Freedom, 1939-1969, by Louise S. Robbins. Wesport, CT: Greenwood, 1996. xviii, 251 pp. 0-3132-9644-8. Bibliography, index. Hardcover, $59.95.
In a decade when threats to intellectual freedom proliferate-most recently with regard to the internet-Louise S. Robbins's book, Censorship and the American Library: The American Library Association's Response to Threats to Intellectual Freedom, 1939-1969, would seem a welcome contribution to the fight against censorship. Robbins, after all, focuses on one of the most turbulent periods in the American Library Association's (ALA) history; a time when powerful, charismatic voices rose to challenge any limits to freedom of expression even as equally vigorous voices rang out to support the suppression of "subversives" and "pornographers." Surely, a history that tills such fertile cultural soil could not only educate the contemporary reader about the evolution of the professional librarian, but also provide a compelling narrative that explores the motives and methods of both the censor-librarians and their opponents. Unfortunately, although Robbins generally succeeds at the former, she hardly attempts the latter. While Robbins clearly outlines major adjustments in ALA policy, she rarely shades in that outline with the personalities of rank-and-file librarians or their leaders. The resulting history, while objective and relatively complete, is bloodless and uninspiring. Robbins, in her attempt to produce a companion volume to Evelyn Geller's Forbidden Books in American Public Libraries, 1876-1939: A Study in Cultural Change (1984), presents a competent catalogue of the ALA's transformation from an ambivalent organization (in matters of censorship) to an...