74 Free Banned Books (for Banned Books Week)

To com­mem­o­rate Banned Books Week, the always great Inter­net Archive has opened up access to 74 banned books. The col­lec­tion fea­tures some seri­ous pieces of lit­er­a­ture (James Joyce’s Ulysses, F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s Ten­der is the Night, Hux­ley’s Brave New World, etc.); some tra­di­tion­al chil­dren’s clas­sics (Win­nie the Pooh); and some sin­is­ter books of unques­tion­able his­tor­i­cal impor­tance (Mein Kampf). These books can be down­loaded in mul­ti­ple dig­i­tal for­mats, includ­ing some­times ePub and Kin­dle for­mats. This gives you the abil­i­ty to read the the works on the Kin­dleiPad, Nook and oth­er main­stream ebook read­ers. (See note below.) But the old fash­ioned com­put­er will also do the job.

Cen­sor­ship remains a seri­ous prob­lem in the US and beyond. The Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion record­ed 460 attempts in 2009 to restrict books in US schools and libraries. But they esti­mate that this rep­re­sents only 20–25% of actu­al attempts to cen­sor. All of this cen­sor­ship is neat­ly (and rather specif­i­cal­ly) tracked on Google Maps.

NOTE: Please see our pre­vi­ous post describ­ing how to add files to the Kin­dle. Mean­while this page describes how to trans­fer ePub files to the iPad.


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Comments (15)
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  • bob says:

    Where’s the link to the col­lec­tion?

  • Dan Colman says:

    Sor­ry about that. I added it in the post. But it also here:

    http://www.archive.org/details/bannedbooks

    Cheers,
    Dan

  • Heather Perkinson says:

    are they avail­able for free indef­i­nite­ly or is there a time lim­it relat­ed to Banned Books Week’s dates?

  • Hotrao says:

    I think cul­ture is also this: hav­ing mas­ter­pieces avail­able to every­body at no cost.

    This does­n’t mean you don’t always have to pay for cul­ture (this dis­cus­sion will take a lot of time), but a basic lay­er of com­mon­ly intend­ed mas­ter­pieces should be avail­able for free.

  • I have Kin­dle for the iPhone. I also have iBooks. What’s the eas­i­est way to get some of these books from their down­load links onto my iPhone for future read­ing?

  • laserbabe says:

    Most of these books are also avail­able through Lib­riVox. So the ques­tion of large body of lit­er­a­ture being avail­able at no cost to the masses…solved. Now, how do we make sure the mass­es know where to find these works? Share the links every chance you get.

  • Win­nie the Pooh for Kin­dle says “Not avail­able due to issues with the item’s con­tent”.

    Oh, yeah, sedi­tious indeed. I grew up read­ing that book, it’s amaz­ing I’m not a com­mie pinko rev­o­lu­tion­ary.

    Please.

  • The Win­nie The pooh ebook from archive.org dis­abled, maybe by google ebooks I don’t no, no free­dom on the web maybe, you get this mes­sage on access their ebook page, and removed from search you can find it by search­ing win­nie the pooh and archive.org

    Item not avail­able
    The item is not avail­able due to issues with the item’s con­tent.

    http://www.archive.org/details/winniethepooh01miln
    it’s fun­ny, since apple gives it away for free in col­or with DRM ebook junk, on ipod touch or ipod ebooks app. but a non-col­or, yel­lowed pages, ver­sion looks kind of old, you can’t even access it, of course I down­loaded it already, before they dis­abled it, it’s only bad for new web users maybe, it’s not like they even cor­rect all the spelling errors this ebook has in it, it’s sad, that they do this to old books, no won­der peo­ple use tor­rent sites, you the stuff you have to put up with, the BS they do, only so google ebooks,or oth­ers that put the crap­py google logo all over their ebooks, talk about stuff the nor­mal users wish they would not do etc..etc..

  • anybizsoft says:

    Oh, yeah, sedi­tious indeed. I grew up read­ing that book, it’s amaz­ing I’m not a com­mie pinko rev­o­lu­tion­ary.

  • anybizsoft says:

    if the book is pdf format,we can use any­biz­soft pdf con­vert­er to con­vert it.

  • Kevin Bacon says:

    I notice the link now says 68 books. I won­der if 6 of them had their bans lift­ed.

  • LolaBookLover says:

    What about Google Play book­store? None of these books are free there, unfor­tu­nate­ly.

  • Ollie Manley says:

    These banned books of our time and his­to­ry need to be made avail­able to the pub­lic so I thank the peo­ple work­ing hard to make it pos­si­ble for us who read see­ing as the new­er gen­er­a­tion is brain washed by elec­tron­ic devices I think it most impor­tant that read­ing be a major part of today’s sco­ci­ety and also for fact of rea­son on the impor­tance of lit­er­a­tures that could pos­si­bly illu­mi­nate his­to­ry and oth­er cul­tur­al impor­tances that reveal and reflect the past so thank you to those of us out there who feel read­ing mate­r­i­al is impor­tant to our sco­ci­ety

  • Terrill, Richard " Terry" says:

    Thank you so much for all you have done here. I am hop­ing some­one might reply to my expe­ri­ence with “Howl”. Even if there is no response, I again thank you for your involve­ment in such a wor­thy project as this.

  • mandis says:

    Hi

    under the link https://archive.org/details/books?query=erotica&sin=&sort=-week&page=3
    you’ll find many erot­ic books. But you’re get­ting only a lim­it­ed pre­view, no free down­load­ing.

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