Dartmouth Barnes & Noble Plays Politics With Book Selections

I love to read books. I enjoy spending time in bookstores, but sometimes the experience is frustrating because the titles stocked by the bookstores reflect a political ideology different from mine.

A good bookstore should offer titles that appeal to all points of view, particularly history books, and books dealing with current affairs. These are the kind of books I like to read.

Several recent books are critical of American history. Fair enough. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story comes to mind, as does White Fear. All viewpoints should be available for the consumers of ideas, not just those with which I agree.

Increasingly, this is not the case.

The Barnes & Noble Bookstore in Dartmouth is an example of how a particular ideology dominates the shelves at the expense of another.

There are plenty of titles about Democrats and left-leaning figures such as Barack and Michelle Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Elizabeth Warren, but nearly nothing about Republicans or conservative viewpoints.

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Ask where the books about or by Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich are, and a clerk directs you to the store's website or offers to order them for you.

I've included photographs so you might judge for yourself.

Barnes & Noble, through exclusion, is practicing censorship by limiting your selection and is thereby choosing sides in the war of ideology. That is not fair, and it is also not healthy for a free society.

I find myself drawn to used bookstores that put all titles on the shelves as they get them and don't make editorial choices about your reading selections.

I have emailed Barnes & Noble for a comment on this story but have not yet received a response.