Reading wars: the story (so far) of Western literacy and the future of free speech

Who gets access to books? And, to what extent does the act of reading shape our humanity? In conversation with Larry Kramer, Don Herzog will discuss his new publication from LSE Press, Reading Wars, which examines the heated, even murderous, political struggles over who gets to read and what they get to read.

Herzog studies the history and politics of anxieties about readers and reading, spanning both the United States and Britain, from the 1500s right up to contemporary battles over banning library books and freedom of speech. The author reconstructs arguments insisting that ordinary men and women could not be trusted to read what they liked – indeed, that some of them ought not read at all. And he charts struggles to promote literacy. Herzog argues that at stake in these battles is whether some people – those banned from reading – are not fully human, or lesser persons than others. The radical campaign to let more or less everyone read more or less everything is ultimately, therefore, a campaign for equality.

Meet our speakers and chair

Don Herzog teaches law and political theory at the University of Michigan, where he has won the Golden Apple Award, a university-wide teaching award bestowed by the student body. Among his previous books are Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders, Household Politics: Conflict in Early Modern England, Defaming the Dead, and A Little Book of Political Mistakes.

Larry Kramer has been President and Vice Chancellor of LSE since April 2024. A constitutional scholar, university administrator, and philanthropic leader, he was previously the President of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Dean of Stanford Law School.

Nicola Lacey is School Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy at LSE. She is a Fellow of the British Academy, served as a member of the British Academy’s Policy Group on Prisons, which reported in 2014, and was from 2014-2019 the Academy’s nominee on the Board of the British Museum. In 2011 she was awarded the Hans Sigrist Prize by the University of Bern, for scholarship on the rule of law in modern societies; in 2022 she won the Law and Society Association’s International Prize; and in 2025 she won the UK Law Teacher of the Year Award. Her publications include A Life of HLA Hart; Women, Crime and Character: From Moll Flanders to Tess of the D’Urbervilles; The Prisoners’ Dilemma, and In Search of Criminal Responsibility.

Devika Hovell is Professor of Public International Law at LSE, specialising in the law on the use of force and international criminal law. She serves on the Editorial Board of the European Journal of International Law, is an editor of the international law blog EJIL:Talk!, and is a fixed-term member at Matrix Chambers in London. Her current book project examines the future of collective security.

More about this event

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