By Bob Needham
Michigan Law
A new book by Professor Don Herzog explores the contentious, sometimes violent history of the written word—and who is permitted to take advantage of it.
“Reading Wars” (LSE Press, 2026) provides a history of conflicts over publishing and reading in the U.S. and the U.K. The book details how various institutions—often backed by the rule of law—have controlled access to writing and reading by certain groups, such as enslaved people or members of a particular faith.
Ultimately, the book makes the case that the right to read is essentially a fight for equality. In that spirit, an electronic version of the book is available for free from the publisher.
Herzog, the Edson R. Sunderland Professor of Law, recently answered five questions about the book:
1. Your book illustrates how historical conflicts over reading have often turned violent. Why does reading have the potential to arouse violence?
Because of the fear that if you put the wrong books in the hands of the wrong people, awful things will happen in the world.
A mistake people make about this stuff is to think of government efforts to govern opinion as totalitarian. I think those efforts actually take shape when states are very weak. They don’t have police forces, so the thing they immediately come up with is to control what people can read. The obvious case is Black Americans, but there’s a parallel in England.
Those are the stakes: social order. A micro version of it for us today is the anxiety about kids having access to any number of books. It’s a fear that if you give those people that material to read, all hell will break loose.
2. In researching this book, did anything surprise you?
I was surprised by how clearly and early people struggling for literacy understood the broader political and social stakes. They didn’t just think, “I would like to read this book.”
For me, one hero of the book is a guy in Scotland. It’s the early 1800s, and he’s interested in politics, and he writes a letter to the newspaper. The town has opened several reading rooms, little private libraries. The letter writer quotes a local churchman who was critical that “every paltry fellow” was reading philosophy and theology. The letter writer expresses his indignation that no one called the churchman to account for saying that.
In that little community, they continued to open reading rooms. You’d show up, grab a book, sit down, and read. At the same time, they were also clearly involved in radical politics, such as labor union organizing.
I was pleasantly surprised by how early and articulately people understood that reading was an important part of citizenship and an important part of being a person—being a full, dignified, equal member of society.
3. Throughout much of the book, the law is a tool on the wrong side of history. Is that still true today?
I don’t think there’s a global answer to that. It’s fragmented and local, and it depends on who’s in charge, which laws are afoot, and what state actors and judges are willing to do.
Plyler v. Doe is a 1982 Supreme Court decision that says it doesn’t matter whether you’re a citizen or not, you are entitled to a public education. But there are efforts now to overturn that.
States have passed laws that say you have to purge sexually explicit books from public libraries and school libraries. There are heroic librarians who have suffered public and private vengeance by saying, “I’m not taking those books off this shelf.” But in a whole lot of other places, they do.
4. How could the law be used to improve these issues?
Copyright law could be more generous about fair use. The industry isn’t as vengeful as the recording industry has been about illegal downloads of music, but that’s a body of law that could be better.
Much of this is not legal, it’s cultural. People spend time on social media and podcasts. For many people—well-off, well-educated people—patient, long-form reading is something they just do not do. That’s not a legal problem in any structural way.
This is an ironic kicker that the book does not take up. We have an unbelievable variety of things to read out there, but many people just don’t care.
5. Not only are people choosing to read less, illiteracy is rising. Is there any way to combat this?
It’s a terrible thing. I don’t think you need to spend hours a day reading to have a good human life.
But the heroes of the book thought good things happen to people who read. They learn about the world. They develop all kinds of cognitive capacities. A lot of them argue they just become better human beings.
Public schools have taken on more and more in this culture—making sure students are fed, offering psychotherapy because their lives are falling apart. That makes it hard.
And yet, so many teachers have utterly lovely aspirations about what they want to do, over and above checking off the curriculum boxes. They want their students to be curious and adventurous and love learning and love reading. They deserve our support.
Michigan Law
A new book by Professor Don Herzog explores the contentious, sometimes violent history of the written word—and who is permitted to take advantage of it.
“Reading Wars” (LSE Press, 2026) provides a history of conflicts over publishing and reading in the U.S. and the U.K. The book details how various institutions—often backed by the rule of law—have controlled access to writing and reading by certain groups, such as enslaved people or members of a particular faith.
Ultimately, the book makes the case that the right to read is essentially a fight for equality. In that spirit, an electronic version of the book is available for free from the publisher.
Herzog, the Edson R. Sunderland Professor of Law, recently answered five questions about the book:
1. Your book illustrates how historical conflicts over reading have often turned violent. Why does reading have the potential to arouse violence?
Because of the fear that if you put the wrong books in the hands of the wrong people, awful things will happen in the world.
A mistake people make about this stuff is to think of government efforts to govern opinion as totalitarian. I think those efforts actually take shape when states are very weak. They don’t have police forces, so the thing they immediately come up with is to control what people can read. The obvious case is Black Americans, but there’s a parallel in England.
Those are the stakes: social order. A micro version of it for us today is the anxiety about kids having access to any number of books. It’s a fear that if you give those people that material to read, all hell will break loose.
2. In researching this book, did anything surprise you?
I was surprised by how clearly and early people struggling for literacy understood the broader political and social stakes. They didn’t just think, “I would like to read this book.”
For me, one hero of the book is a guy in Scotland. It’s the early 1800s, and he’s interested in politics, and he writes a letter to the newspaper. The town has opened several reading rooms, little private libraries. The letter writer quotes a local churchman who was critical that “every paltry fellow” was reading philosophy and theology. The letter writer expresses his indignation that no one called the churchman to account for saying that.
In that little community, they continued to open reading rooms. You’d show up, grab a book, sit down, and read. At the same time, they were also clearly involved in radical politics, such as labor union organizing.
I was pleasantly surprised by how early and articulately people understood that reading was an important part of citizenship and an important part of being a person—being a full, dignified, equal member of society.
3. Throughout much of the book, the law is a tool on the wrong side of history. Is that still true today?
I don’t think there’s a global answer to that. It’s fragmented and local, and it depends on who’s in charge, which laws are afoot, and what state actors and judges are willing to do.
Plyler v. Doe is a 1982 Supreme Court decision that says it doesn’t matter whether you’re a citizen or not, you are entitled to a public education. But there are efforts now to overturn that.
States have passed laws that say you have to purge sexually explicit books from public libraries and school libraries. There are heroic librarians who have suffered public and private vengeance by saying, “I’m not taking those books off this shelf.” But in a whole lot of other places, they do.
4. How could the law be used to improve these issues?
Copyright law could be more generous about fair use. The industry isn’t as vengeful as the recording industry has been about illegal downloads of music, but that’s a body of law that could be better.
Much of this is not legal, it’s cultural. People spend time on social media and podcasts. For many people—well-off, well-educated people—patient, long-form reading is something they just do not do. That’s not a legal problem in any structural way.
This is an ironic kicker that the book does not take up. We have an unbelievable variety of things to read out there, but many people just don’t care.
5. Not only are people choosing to read less, illiteracy is rising. Is there any way to combat this?
It’s a terrible thing. I don’t think you need to spend hours a day reading to have a good human life.
But the heroes of the book thought good things happen to people who read. They learn about the world. They develop all kinds of cognitive capacities. A lot of them argue they just become better human beings.
Public schools have taken on more and more in this culture—making sure students are fed, offering psychotherapy because their lives are falling apart. That makes it hard.
And yet, so many teachers have utterly lovely aspirations about what they want to do, over and above checking off the curriculum boxes. They want their students to be curious and adventurous and love learning and love reading. They deserve our support.
