We made a website pretending to want history banned, because it turns out you'll click anything if it's worded confidently.
banhistory.com first launched in 2020 as a satirical one-pager by TOPEYE, arguing in mock-earnest in favor of removing history from American classrooms. The premise was sharp. The execution was unfinished. The intervening years made the joke considerably less hypothetical.
This is the 2026 revamp. Same premise. Sharper craft. Real receipts.
The numbers on this site are not made up. They come from PEN America's Index of School Book Bans, 2024–2025 (published 2025-10-01), the most authoritative running tally of public-school book removals in the United States. PEN counts a "ban" as the removal of a book from school shelves, temporary or permanent. ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom tracks challenges (attempts) and gets to slightly different totals; both are directionally consistent.
The bylines, school-board members, and quotes throughout the site are fabricated. Everything else — the topics being removed, the legislation being passed, the states and districts — is real.
Snapshot date: 2026-05-16. 22 states enumerated in by_state; PEN reports 23 with bans this cycle. One low-count state was unidentified in extracted secondary sources and should be reconciled against the source PDF before launch.
- Donate. EveryLibrary Action is the only federal PAC dedicated to fighting school-board book-ban campaigns. Five dollars helps them win the next race.
- Unlock a card. Brooklyn Public Library's Books Unbanned program issues free national e-library cards to any US teen 13–21, unlocking BPL's full catalog including banned titles. 330,000 cards issued to teens in all 50 states.
- Show up. Most book bans are decided at a school-board meeting that fewer than thirty people attend. Ballotpedia's sample-ballot lookup shows you the next one on your ballot.
Made by people who can't shut up about it. Type by Inter, Playfair Display, Archivo Black, Libre Caslon Text, DM Mono, and a handful of others. Hosted on Cloudflare Pages. No tracking, no auth, no accounts. Powered by TOPEYE.