Praise for On Book Banning

Though book banning is usually associated with repressive or conservative mindsetsancient Rome or Florida momseven classic texts have fallen prey of late to a censorship consensus enforced by liberalminded gatekeepers In the latest in Biblioasiss continuing Field Notes series Wells seeks to define the controversial practice and explore its effects

Globe and Mail

A concise exquisite and tidy inquiry into our common desire to protect against the other Wells serves up a masterful and provocative treatise about the nature of free speech and the power of the written word

Winnipeg Free Press

With this slim volume Wells persuasively explains how book banning reduces and devalues art and how it constitutes an attack on intellectual autonomy and on your right to determine the future of your own mind

Keith Garebian Literary Review of Canada

Both important and urgent and its value enduring I can only hope that it will find its way to libraries across the land

The Miramichi Reader

Timely and relevant balanced and engaging

Marcie McCauley Buried In Print

What emerges in this deceptively slim and powerful volume is the voice of a devoted readerOn Book Banning is a testament to the lifealtering power of books and ideas

Quill amp Quire starred review

An expert assessment of literary censorship and a strong rebuttal to contemporary book bans

Foreword Reviews

A thoughtful conversationally written reflection on why banning books damages the fabric of social belonging

Kirkus Reviews

Censorship from groups such as Moms for Liberty is rampant but Wells points out that liberal censorship and cancel culture are on the rise as well Both Wells argues are challenges to democracy On Book Banning calls out different groups definitions of harm and warns of the intellectual deterioration these conflicts cause

Booklist

Beneath the elegant prose of this small volume lies a vast urgency and passion about language books and human consciousness The hotbutton political debatesabout freedom of thought and the value of open access and the depredations of governments and activists to control bothare set against a background of deep yearning for connection between minds Wells has given us a wise and powerful example of that very thing

Mark Kingwell author of Question Authority A Polemic about Trust in Five Meditations

In this impressive book Ira Wells provides an insightful and engaging discussion of the renewed embrace of censorship by both progressives and traditionalists and what it can mean for the possibility of building a more socially just and democratic society today On Book Banning is a gem that I cannot recommend highly enough

James L Turk Director Centre for Free Expression Toronto Metropolitan University

Wells does a good job of illustrating how the new censorship consensus has brought left and right together in a push to suppress or eliminate voices and volumes they deem dangerous immoral or otherwise unsavoury These selfappointed protectors of morality and intellectual curiosity on both sides of the political spectrum have eroded the liberal ideal of free expression and ushered in a new era of censorship by another name By calling it out for what it is Wells does a valuable service

Steven W Beattie That Shakespearean Rag

Praise for Norman Jewison A Directors Life

Norman Jewison A Directors Life is a fascinating story told with verve and authority

Toronto Star

To read Norman Jewison A Directors Life is to wonder why this most consequential of directors wasnt better known A big thanks to Ira Wells for giving biography treatment to a major Hollywood creator who strangely never became a legend

Forbes

Ira Wells makes the persuasive case that Jewison deserves more fame than he has received and along the way delivers a rollicking tale of Hollywood during Jewisons most active years and plenty of backstage trivia

Air Mail

An exhaustively researched look at the career of the countrys most prolific but least understood filmmaker The book is an ambitious and frequently essential endeavour

Globe and Mail

A thoroughly enjoyable and detailed look at a memorable life in film

Library Journal