Well-Read Wednesday

In 2025, 1984 feels less like a cautionary novel and more like an operating manual. George Orwell wrote it to warn us about authoritarian control, mass surveillance, and the decay of truth. Instead, we built systems that fulfilled every one of his nightmares. A Book Born from the Ashes of War Published in 1949, 1984 emerged from a world still raw from fascism and Soviet terror. Orwell had watched propaganda redefine reality in Spain, witnessed Stalinist purges twist languag

A Comparative Look at U.S. and Canadian K–12 Education (2019–2025) School libraries are a battleground now. In 2019, book challenges were a rarity — a few scattered objections, barely a tremor in the wider culture. But by 2025, they’ve exploded into more than 20,000 bans across U.S. schools alone. Books that parents never thought twice about — that you maybe read yourself — are being pulled from shelves. The stories didn't change, didn't magically get more dangerous. So what