Why Do Texas Prisons Ban ‘Freakonomics' But Not Adolf Hitler's ‘Mein Kampf'?

AUSTIN — More than 10,000 books are banned from Texas prisons, but they might not be the ones you think. Alice Walker's The Color Purple, which won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for fiction, is not allowed. Neither is Freakonomics, the 2005 bestseller that explained concepts such as cheating at school and parenting techniques using economic theory. But Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, as well as his On National Socialism and World Relations, are both on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's list of approved books. Also allowed are two books by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke as well as James Battersby's The Holy Book of Adolf Hitler, described on Amazon.com as "the Bible of neo-Nazism and of esoteric Hitlerism."Where's Waldo? Santa Spectacular is banned. So is Homer Simpson's Little Book of Laziness and Monty Python's Big Red Book. A collection of Shakespearean sonnets is banned.On the approved list? Satan's Sorcery Volume I by Rev. Caesar 999 and 100 Great Poems of Love and Lust.The Dallas Morning News requested a full list of the books Texas' nearly 150,000 inmates can and cannot read in the state's dozens of prisons. A total of 248,281 titles are on the approved list; another 10,073 are banned. What gets banned?  Continue reading...