"Few books have caused as big a stir as John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. A month after it was published in April 1939, it stood as the nation's No. 1 best seller. And by summer in Kern County, California - the Joads' newfound home - the book was burned publicly and banned from local schools and library shelves. Obscene in the Extreme tells the remarkable story behind this fit of censorship." "It all begins as Kern County librarian Gretchen Knief returns home from vacation to discover the Board of Supervisors voting to suppress Steinbeck's novel. When agribusiness titan W. B. "Bill" Camp presides over the book's torching in downtown Bakersfield a few days later, he declares, "We are angry not because we were attacked, but because we were attacked by a book obscene. in the extreme sense of the word." Yet Knief bravely fights back: "If that book is banned today, what will be banned tomorrow?"" "Rick Wartzman meticulously brings to life this moment in history, when Nazis were burning books in Europe and Americans were questioning whether capitalism itself was worth preserving. Those who found strength in Steinbeck's work believed, as he did, that California's farming giants were mistreating their migrant laborers. Those who condemned the book believed that society was in danger of disintegrating, thanks to troublemakers like Steinbeck. Obscene in the Extreme highlights just how volatile the world was in 1939, how central California was a tinderbox and The Grapes of Wrath a match."--BOOK JACKET.
