AUSTIN — More than 10,000 books are banned from Texas prisons, but they might not be the ones you think.
Alice Walker's The Color Purple, which won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for fiction, is not allowed. Neither is Freakonomics, the 2005 bestseller that explained concepts such as cheating at school and parenting techniques using economic theory.
But Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, as well as his On National Socialism and World Relations, are both on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's list of approved books. Also allowed are two books by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke as well as James Battersby's The Holy Book of Adolf Hitler, described on Amazon.com as "the Bible of neo-Nazism and of esoteric Hitlerism."
Where's Waldo? Santa Spectacular is banned. So is Homer Simpson's Little Book of Laziness and Monty Python's Big Red Book. A collection of Shakespearean sonnets is banned.
On the approved list? Satan's Sorcery Volume I by Rev. Caesar 999 and 100 Great Poems of Love and Lust.
The Dallas Morning News requested a full list of the books Texas' nearly 150,000 inmates can and cannot read in the state's dozens of prisons. A total of 248,281 titles are on the approved list; another 10,073 are banned.
casher78 on November 28th, 2017 at 23:42 UTC »
As a former inmate in the TDCJ, I can confirm that the approved reading list can be frustratingly hard to navigate, especially when you’re having relatives or friends send you books from the outside.
Bizzle_worldwide on November 28th, 2017 at 22:54 UTC »
Freakonomics had an entire chapter on the organization methods of Chicago gangs and the economics of distributing, as well as prostitution. It was extremely interesting, but still about drugs, crime and prostitution.
Torontosaurus-Rex on November 28th, 2017 at 21:04 UTC »
I would think because Freakonomics blog discusses sociology focusing on rationale behind topics that may be of concern. It’s not just crime related but how to cause a successful terror act or posts related to sex workers. I love that blog and books. Didn’t know it was banned.