This week we're all pondering the decision by the Tennessee School Board to remove the

acclaimed nonfiction comic book mouse from its curriculum.

The book recounts the experience of author Art Spiegelmann's father in Holocaust and

recasts various nationalities as animals.

For instance, Germans are cats, Americans dogs, Jews mice.

In 1992, mouse became the first and so far only graphic novel to win the Pulitzer.

On Friday, we're going to devote much of the big show to the squelching of books,

circa 2022.

But we thought we'd use this opportunity to remind listeners to the podcast of some of

the history of American book banning, and one man who seems to have had a whole lot

of fun doing battle with it.

In 1951, Grove Press was a tiny, almost defunct independent publisher with just three titles

in its catalog, including Herman Melville's The Confidence Man.

But then, Barney Rossett took over, and with a few choice books, helped push America

past its puritanical roots into the sexual revolution.

Rossett was a native Chicagoan who settled in New York after returning from the war.

He began publishing such authors as Jack Carrowack and explicit works of erotica, like the story

of O.

It wasn't long before Rossett and Grove Press found themselves defending the first amendment

in the courts.

This is Barney from the documentary about him called Obsine.

When we published Lady Chattelies' Lover, it was denounced as a wicked, perverse, terrible,

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