The Literary Wars

Is politics downstream of culture? Not in the publishing industry.

This is evident in the recent publication of two books on editing and publishing, Karen Yin’s The Conscious Style Guide (2024) and Adam Szetela’s That Book Is Dangerous! (2025). The first is a call for editors to advance social justice through equitable language while the second reports from inside the publishing industry on the outcome. It would be blithe to say that the second book is sufficient condemnation of Yin’s project, but Szetela’s analysis of moral panics in literary culture is far from the only evidence that the search for, and imposition of, correct speech can be socially and politically ruinous.