There was a time Banned Books Week was a nonpartisan celebration of edgy books and bold librarians. Anarchists, it seems, would prefer to steal books instead of pay for them: copies of the book were always disappearing when we kept them out on the shelves. We did this not in order to deter sales of the book but to deter theft of the book. Eventually, we kept all copies of the book behind the counter.
Andy ngo powells manual#
One of the most controversial items we carried was “The Anarchist Cookbook,” a bomb-making manual published back in 1971.
Andy ngo powells skin#
Parents occasionally complained that they didn’t like bringing their children into the store because we carried High Times (a pro-marijuana magazine) and various skin mags. The chain embraced a very libertarian aesthetic for bookselling, and we carried a lot of books and magazines that people in the community didn’t like. ‘Banned Books Week’ Only Celebrates the Narrativeīack in the 1990s, I worked at a Tower Books store in Citrus Heights, California. But for some reason, Powell’s didn’t think to mention it in its annual email celebrating Banned Books Week.
The fact that nearly 5,000 readers have posted reviews of the book on Amazon, 97 percent of which have been positive, suggests there is a huge demand for the book. 27, the day after Powell’s sent out the email promoting its opposition to banning books, “Unmasked” was listed number two on Amazon’s list of bestselling books on local politics, number four in radical political thought, and, ironically, number 37 among books on censorship and politics. Still, refusing to stock a book because of the objections of an extremist political group that is known to occasionally use violence to achieve its aims seems like the height of corporate cowardice. Powell’s does sell “Unmasked” through its online portal (where, the company noted in its tweet, “we carry a lot of books we find abhorrent”). We carry a lot of books we find abhorrent, as well as those that we treasure. That said, it will remain in our online catalog. This book will not be placed on our shelves. So, on its Twitter account, Powell’s announced that “Unmasked by Andy Ngo came to us through an automatic data feed through one of our longtime partners, Hachette Book Group. You would think a bookstore headquartered in Portland would want to celebrate a local writer, especially one whose life has exemplified how foreign immigrants and their American-born children help add to the American cultural mosaic. His parents were Vietnamese boat people who fled to America after the chaotic end of the Vietnam War. Ngo is much reviled by leftwingers in Portland for exposing the violent tactics of the movement known as “Antifa.” Ngo was born and raised in Portland. Why Won’t Powell’s Sell Andy Ngo’s Book In Stores? It’s quite the change of tune for Powell’s, which announced back in January that it would not carry the book “ Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy” by conservative journalist Andy Ngo in its store.
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