Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century

Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century. By Rebecca Knuth. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003. 277 pp. $39.95. ISBN 0-275-98088-X.

"As good almost kill a man as kill a good book," wrote John Milton in his spirited essay "Areopagitica" in defense of press freedom some 360 years ago. He was perhaps the first writer to suggest a kinship between the destruction of books and the destruction of human beings. Although the single-word title of this monograph-Libricide-is a relatively recent coinage in the English language, dating back only about a century and a half, the phenomenon of intentional library destruction is of great antiquity. Perhaps since the beginning of writing libraries have been destroyed not only by...