Forgotten Controversial Books

What makes Kate Chopin’s The Awakening controversial?

A summary of Voltaire’s play, about the prophet Mohammed, that was banned in France, then endorsed by the Pope

How Voltaire got the Church to approve of his play, Mahomet the Prophet?

Controversial advice from the schoolchildren’s book on education

Controversial advice on sex and drugs from the schoolchildren’s book

Black Code: One of the earliest and most important legal documents on slavery in the West

Summary of the book by Pierre Vallières, one of the leaders of Front de libération du Québec. Read the controversial quotes

A brief historical outline of Quebec’s attempts at independence

Seven communist ideas in White Niggers of America (1968) could be traced to the writings of Karl Marx

Why The Art of Love by Ovid was repeatedly censored: burnt in Florence, banned in England and seized in the U.S.?

Ancient controversial advice: Why you should play tricks on him and when to offer your body as a “thank-you”

The Art of Love shows how the courtship game, once played by all, has changed

The Roman “love guru” covered seduction, deception, jealousy, adultery, forceful sex and good sex

Why was the 1950s French novel banned? It begins with O’s lover sexually training her: She is stripped, whipped and “gangbanged”

Why Story of O (1954) is a morally repugnant book?

Summary and excerpts from the radical text that inspired terror attacks over the last 40 years

Photos show how a 1964 text laid the foundations of Islamic terrorism

The three themes of their manifesto show how the Futurists envisioned the modern world a century ago

‘Speed is Divine’: Why the Italian poet Marinetti spoke of speed in religious terms

The machine demonized, deified, humanized and eventually merged with us

The Italian Futurist poet, F. T. Marinetti, was a misogynist and a proto-feminist all at once

Those who embraced state-sponsored iconoclasm as a fast track to modernization

The most important elements of Fascism could be traced to Italian Futurist writings years earlier

Read the obscene parts of the first two chapters that sent the Italian author to court

Not welcome as mothers or lovers!