SILENCE = DEATH

Naomi Wolf’s latest book, Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love, was initially scheduled for publication last year. But after its release in the U.K, the publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, abruptly canceled its U.S. distribution and even directed “librarians to destroy the book,” says Wolf, a feminist author known for The Beauty Myth. It’s an odd parallel to the content of Outrages, which details the censorship and destruction of LGBTQ+ literature in 19th-century England.

Now expanded and released by a new publisher, Outrages traces the rise of statesponsored censorship and homophobia to an explosion of infectious diseases in the 1800s, after which “filth” was seen not just as a personal issue but a public one. The British government later expanded its reach to words and ideas it considered dangerous to public well-being.

At the center of the 2019 controversy