This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
Reading a synopsis for the buzzy new novel “Yesteryear” by Caro Claire Burke put me on high alert. As an avid reader dependent upon an overwhelmingly liberal publishing industry, I’m used to disagreeing with most of the themes and insight of popular fiction. But this one seemed egregious.
The description says, “A traditional American woman, a beautiful wife and mother who sells her pioneer lifestyle of raw milk and farm-fresh eggs to her millions of social media followers, suddenly awakens cold, filthy, and terrified in the brutal reality of 1805 — where she must unravel whether this living nightmare is an elaborate hoax, a twisted reality show, or something far more sinister in this sensational debut novel.”
Despite my misgivings, I had to read it. 
There’s no use sugarcoating it: I hated this book. But it wasn’t because I believe trad wife influencers are above reproach, or even that I think it’s beneficial to watch them peddling impossibly perfect lives on social media. It’s because this could have been a discussion-worthy commentary on the fake-ness of content creators, performative motherhood, or even the realities of homesteading in the modern world. Instead, readers are treated to outlandish caricatures.
It all starts on the first page as the protagonist describes herself: &#8220;And who was I? A flawless Christian woman. A manic pixie American dream girl of this nation&#8217;s deepest, darkest fantasies. The mother every woman wanted to be, and the wife every man wanted to come home to. Like a nun in a porno, it didn&#8217;t make sense, by also, by God: it worked &#8230; I was perfect at being alive.&#8221;
“Yesteryear” is being marketed as satirical just so the author can say no, she’s not being mean; she’s just being funny. It’s really just code for, “I want to say something lazy and insulting, but I also want immunity from criticism.” If you don’t like it, it’s because you’re overly sensitive or you don’t get the joke. If you do like it, congratulations! You got to feel morally superior while consuming liberal fever dream propaganda.
In Burke’s world, conservative women are fake, Christian women are performative, husbands are abusive, followers are stupid, and every conservative person ever is secretly miserable, plus just objectively awful. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Every character exists to prove that stereotypes are reality.
The main character, Natalie, is not-so-subtly based on the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mom-of-8-ballerina-farm-founder-defends-her-life-choices-marriage-after-scathing-expose">most famous trad wife influencer</a> of them all, the Juilliard-trained ballerina turned influencer Hannah Neeleman, aka Ballerina Farm. Her family-run farm, old-fashioned kitchen, and overall aesthetic launched a tidal wave of copycats and haters. It would appear this author falls into the latter camp.
&#8220;Yesteryear&#8221; protagonist Natalie is presented as a trad wife influencer who screams at her kids between photos, snaps at her husband, and treats her family like props for content. She despises her husband (&#8220;an actual, honest-to-God idiot&#8221;), her mother, her sister, her kids, and really everyone in her life, saying that &#8220;most people are morons.&#8221; She joins coaching calls full of Christian women with Idaho cattle farms trying to “make it big” online. The followers who call her out for being fake are collectively known as “angry women.”
It’s not even clear why Natalie is in the game other than to make money. Even after hitting the big time, her sour attitude never changes. 
And Natalie, while pretending to be deeply religious — not just as the narrator, but also to herself — does things like call people she doesn&#8217;t like &#8220;c*nt&#8221; and then semi-apologize in the form of a prayer. &#8220;Sorry, Lord, but really, f*** her,&#8221; she thinks to herself after an unpleasant encounter with a fan at Target.
It appears the author genuinely cannot imagine that any woman might sincerely want marriage, children, homemaking, or a more traditional family structure. In this worldview, if a woman says she likes that life, she must be lying, oppressed, dumb, or running a scam. Or in this case, actually disturbed and dissociating. 
But it’s satire. We’re all supposed to pretend this is comedy when it clearly represents a deep contempt for conservative women. The book is saying what a lot of progressive women already believe: These women are frauds, and we’re smarter than them. How original. 
Of course, once Natalie goes back in time, her husband beats her. He rapes her, too. Because if he’s a man from the late 1800s, naturally, he has to be a violent monster. And then — spoiler alert — it turns out he’s really a modern man acting like he’s from the past. The ending makes less sense than the lead-up, and all of it amounts to nothing more than grievance-driven fiction.
And now for the real spoiler alert. The big twist turns Natalie into a rapist. Yes, Natalie. Her husband&#8217;s father, a staunch conservative, is running for president, but then Natalie&#8217;s producer reveals that her boss raped her. At first the family believes the rapist is Caleb, making them annoyed but not entirely outraged because, as it&#8217;s presented, these things can be swept under the rug. But when they find out it was Natalie sexually assaulting the young woman, all hell breaks loose.
&#8220;If only my husband had raped our producer,&#8221; the book says. &#8220;That was basically what [her father-in-law] said that night, what he roared for hours and hours &#8230; if only his stupid little son had raped our stupid little producer &#8230; it would&#8217;ve been over with and forgotten in two weeks. But a predatory woman? Unthinkable. A good Christian mother and wife who (allegedly!) found other women attractive? &#8230; Kill the witch. Burn her.&#8221;
The solution Natalie comes up with for her misdeed is going off-grid with her family and turning her house into the fantasy she had been projecting online all along. She disconnects from the outside world completely, lives like it&#8217;s the 1800s, and ignores the fallout from the tell-all interview that ruined her life. Her older children, led by her surly daughter, run away from home, and then Natalie mostly disassociates and forgets she ever lived in modern times, aided by crushed up pills served in the form of a &#8220;calming tonic.&#8221;
Natalie&#8217;s husband remains a loser who sneaks off every day pretending to farm but is really watching TV in a nearby cabin and picking up grocery deliveries. They have more children because in their fake 19th-century world, suddenly his impotence is gone and he keeps impregnating his wife. The book ends with Natalie&#8217;s older children coming to rescue the younger kids who don&#8217;t realize there&#8217;s a modern world out there. Natalie goes to prison for aggravated child abuse.
Even mainstream media outlets admitted “Yesteryear” isn’t that great. Harper’s Bazaar <a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/art-books-music/a71141347/yesteryear-review-harpers-bazaar-books-newsletter/">called it</a> a “vaguely feminist fairy tale” that only works “when you don’t think too much about it.” Vox <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/486360/yesteryear-review-caro-claire-burke">said</a> it &#8220;offers a sadistic influencer comeuppance fantasy.&#8221;
Plenty of GoodReads reviewers found the book to be about as deep as a driveway puddle. One reader called it “a mean-spirited revenge fantasy against a strawman the author made up.”
“In my experience, satire is supposed to say something, not just be an overt open mocking. I understand why this book will be popular, especially considering modern trends in literature, but all the positive reviews make me feel like someone’s trying to prank me a little bit,” the reviewer <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/238226942-yesteryear#CommunityReviews">wrote</a>.
Another reader said the story was actually detrimental to the cause of feminism because the characters “don’t seem like real people.”
And that’s what annoyed me most. This book could have been thought-provoking. There is a genuinely interesting story to tell about women turning their homes, marriages, and children into content, and about influencers pretending to live in 19th-century cabins while secretly using a behind-the-scenes microwave. That would be interesting. This, however, was not. 
Instead, the author took the laziest possible route, declaring that all trad wives are fake, all conservative men are monsters, all religious women are grifters, and all enlightened readers should just laugh at them. What you’re left with is not actually satire. It’s just a smug piece of trash that will sell a million copies because liberal women love it.

woman milkmaid milking a cow, farm

The New Book That Treats Traditional Wives Like The Enemy

Book Review

Books

Upstream

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
When Buckingham Palace announced that King Charles and Queen Camilla would visit the United States to mark the 250th anniversary of American independence, I knew I had to call Mark Helprin.
The bestselling author’s fifth novel, 2005’s “Freddy and Fredericka,” is a thinly veiled sendup of Charles and Princess Diana — who, in this case, must travel to America and recapture “the colonies” in order to be blessed by an immortal, magical falcon who selects the true kings of England.
If you’ve never read one of Helprin’s novels, that summary is a pretty good glimpse into the experience: discursive and funny with a healthy shake of magical realism.
“Freddy and Fredericka” is a darkly comic romp across the United States that finds our heroes falling in love with the country they were sent to recapture, urging Americans to “let everything in the nation flow through you” and to return to “your original principles … immaterial and bright, ever enduring.”
It’s been more than a decade since I first read “Freddy and Fredericka,” and I’ve returned again and again to this book, essentially “Democracy In America” in novel form. So I was excited to ask Helprin how much Tocqueville was on his mind while he wrote the novel.
“He wasn’t,” Helprin said, for one simple reason: He had never read Tocqueville.
He was, however, in the process of reading “Democracy in America” in French, along with &#8220;The Wealth of Nations,&#8221; another classic he’s never gotten to. Shakespeare and Dante are in heavy rotation, however, as is fiction until the Lost Generation. Nothing after Fitzgerald and Hemingway holds much interest for Helprin, which, he stresses, has everything to do with his personal taste and nothing to do with snobbery.
There’s nothing about Helprin’s oeuvre or demeanor that would suggest he is anything other than well-read. But if yielding at Dos Passos for some reason stirs up doubts about Helprin’s literacy, the thousands of volumes that line the shelves of Helprin&#8217;s Charlottesville home should put them to rest. I once heard that Helprin has every paper he’s ever written, going back to his undergraduate career at Harvard, if not high school.
I didn’t ask him about this because I didn’t want it to not be true. After our conversation, I’m certain it is.
Helprin is everything you want him to be. Smartly dressed in a light check blazer, occasionally self-effacing and always captivating, he’s like a character from one of his novels — the latest of which, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Elegy-Blue-Novel-Mark-Helprin/dp/1419786083">“Elegy In Blue,”</a> hits shelves this week. All told, he’s written nine novels, three collections of short stories, and three children&#8217;s books illustrated by “Jumanji” author Chris Van Allsburg.
In addition, Helprin maintains a steady stream of political commentary, weighing in on everything from copyright law to foreign policy. Helprin’s fans, myself included, say he’s one of the greatest living American novelists. Helprin almost certainly wouldn’t say that about himself, which is likely why, despite a half-century in the public eye, he manages to fly somewhat under the radar.
Helprin’s relative anonymity is especially ironic considering his downright cinematic backstory. His mother was an actress in the Golden Age of Hollywood who left the Silver Screen to join the Group Theatre, a famous Method acting collective. His father, an American commando who worked for Winston Churchill during the Second World War, later became the head of London Films. It was there, in an office in Mayfair, that the first seeds for “Freddy and Fredericka” were planted by the king and queen themselves.
“Part of his job was, when the Queen and Prince Philip wanted to see a film, they would come in one Rolls Royce, no security or anything like that,” Helprin recalls. “He would greet them on the sidewalk and then escort them upstairs and into the screening room, where there was a buffet laid out with caviar and shrimp and everything, champagne, whatever.”
“And they would sit down, and then he would introduce the film, tell them about how it was made, what the subject was, whatever screen the film,” he continues. “And then afterwards, he would take questions from them, if they had any, and then escort them down to the street and see them off and say, thank you very much for coming.”
“They never thanked him, ever,” Helprin notes.
Helprin never forgot that. Not as he did his graduate work, which kept him at Harvard before taking him to Oxford; not during his time in the Israel Defense Forces, a tour of duty he embarked on after he was asked — and declined — to move to Cairo and serve as the Middle East editor for the New York Times.
Somewhere toward the end of his itinerant youth, he began a career as a writer. His first novel, “Refiner’s Fire,” was published in 1977. He achieved mainstream success with 1983’s “Winter’s Tale” and 1991’s “A Soldier Of The Great War.”
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<div id="attachment_1086299" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1086299" class="size-medium wp-image-1086299" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-50466632-300x192.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="192" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-50466632-300x192.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-50466632-900x576.jpg 900w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-50466632-768x491.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-50466632.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Photo by Mario Ruiz/Getty Images</div>
It was during a three-month book tour for the latter novel that the seeds planted by his family’s royal connection finally began to sprout. It was the &#8217;90s, and Charles and Di were all over the news. Seeing a man and a woman washing dishes at a restaurant kitchen one night, one of his daughters asked if the scullions were the duke and duchess.
Helprin saw an opportunity for “misapprehension,” which he calls “the funniest part of all humor.”
“If you think about the royals in Britain, they have so much opportunity for that because they live in a completely different world,” Helprin says. “But there&#8217;s even greater opportunity if they&#8217;re here amongst the colonials incognito.”
“Freddy and Fredericka” was a success in the United States. It was not published in Britain, where audiences were less receptive to Helprin’s take on the monarchy. Helprin has no regrets.
“I mocked the royals because they&#8217;re mockable,” he says. “They&#8217;re insanely mockable. They&#8217;re freaks, right? And they live in a freakish world.”
But Helprin appreciates that by separating their head of state and the head of government, the British monarchy “allows a really stable, decent government.” That attitude didn’t fly with “the loony Left” across the pond.
At least one person in Great Britain received a copy, however.
“Just by chance, I was invited to dinner that Prince Charles was supposed to attend in Washington, D.C.,” Helprin recalls. “And I said, &#8216;Well, you know what I better do? I better send Freddy and Fredericka to the palace,’ because, you know, to give them advance warning you don&#8217;t want to sandbag people.”
“So I sent it to the palace,” he explains, “and then without any word whatsoever, I was just disinvited to the dinner.”
Had he met Charles, Helprin says, he would have “approached him as an American.”
“We don&#8217;t believe that people are born with privilege, that, in other words, that privilege is legitimate, that they&#8217;re entitled to it, and we see them eye to eye,” Helprin adds. “That&#8217;s what America is about, and that there&#8217;s a very, very powerful force behind that, our history, our power, our ethos and the founding, which was, I think, divinely inspired.”
“If I&#8217;m sitting across from the King of England,” Helprin says, “I don&#8217;t feel lesser in any way.”
It’s a line that could have been spoken by most of Helprin’s protagonists. The typical Helprin hero is a kind of Aristotelian great-souled man with a Brooklyn accent. Most of Helprin’s novels take place in and around New York City, where Helprin was born and lived the first five years of his life, and a city that still captivates him and feels like home, despite the oppressive scale of “way too tall” buildings and the scourge of bike messengers zipping around with food, &#8220;because everybody has to have instant gratification.”
Of all Helprin’s New York novels, “Winter’s Tale” stands alone. Set simultaneously at the turns of the 20th and 21st centuries, the novel has at least 100 characters, a lengthy subplot about rival 19th-century newspaper barons, a magical realist upstate New York town with its own magic language, and a flying white horse.
That barely scratches the surface of what “Winter’s Tale” is about, and I’m not sure I could accurately describe it if I tried. The book has stuck with me, almost haunted me, for years. Whenever I’ve read another of Helprin’s books, I hope to find within it the key to understanding it. I never have.
Helprin, it seems, is in the same boat.
“I can&#8217;t explain it, but it possessed me day and night,” he says. “I would spend days in the New York Historical Society … and I&#8217;d walk the streets, looking at things and getting very, very obsessed and emotional about it.”
“So in a sense, I&#8217;m not the one to explain it, because it seizes me as much as other people who report that it did the same to them,” Helprin adds. “I felt as if I was just a medium of something that was speaking through me.”
To the extent that the book is about one thing, Helprin says, it’s about justice. Divine justice.
“People say God works in mysterious ways. Well, they&#8217;re not necessarily mysterious,” he says — they just come “from the past.”
“Who said that everything has to be made right in the timeline that we can perceive? Maybe it&#8217;s different, maybe from the divine perspective, the timeline is infinitely long, and the balances are affected and affect justice over a long period of time, so that after an injustice, maybe 20 years later, there&#8217;s some sort of a compromise,” Helprin adds.
“If you look at the whole of humanity and the whole of the universe as being one construct, if you think that from the divine perspective, that&#8217;s what it is, because you see from very far away, and it&#8217;s as one thing actually, without time.”
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<div id="attachment_1086301" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1086301" class="size-medium wp-image-1086301" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-502546985-300x224.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="224" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-502546985-300x224.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-502546985-773x576.jpg 773w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-502546985-768x572.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-502546985.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Photo by John Mahler/Toronto Star via Getty Images</div>
We mortals, of course, cannot see as God sees. But this is what Helprin aims to do in his novels. More than that, it’s how he sees the world, day in and day out.
“If you ask my wife, she would tell you, it&#8217;s very difficult to be married to me,” he says. “Very, very difficult.”
To stay grounded while thinking these lofty thoughts, Helprin works. He has been an agricultural worker, a surveyor, a dishwasher, and a stevedore.
“I spend so much time working, doing hard, physical, exhausting labor, that while I&#8217;m doing that often I think of things and think of what I&#8217;m going to do about the book, and when I get the chance to actually write the book, I’m so grateful for it because it&#8217;s different from, you know, spending hours on a tractor in the hot sun or getting rid of trees that fall,” he says. “So you come in from the heat and the dust and the dirt and the blood — if you work on a farm, you&#8217;re gonna have a lot of blood, and you&#8217;ll be lucky if you keep your fingers when you come in — then you have a refuge. And it&#8217;s a great privilege.”
“It&#8217;s almost like — to return to where we started — almost like being a royal,” he adds.
Helprin is on the cusp of turning 80, and while he says nothing to suggest that he wants to give up the punishing labor that’s driven so much of his life (and allowed him never to take a publisher’s advance), mortality is at least a little on his mind.
“Elegy In Blue,” he notes, “is probably not going to be my last book, as I&#8217;m working on another one. But, who knows, I may not be able to finish the other one. I might die before I do.”
Like his novels, Helprin feels neither outdated nor contemporary. He is a man out of time, a bridge between this century and the last who would likely feel equally at home in both. He speaks as he writes, and he lives like the characters he creates, a true American original.
But, unsurprisingly, the anti-monarchist with Tory sensibilities does miss the world he grew up in.
“I have to say, I do miss it, I really do,” he says. “When you&#8217;re going to be 80, then you&#8217;ll probably miss it, too. You know, that&#8217;s the way it is. And it&#8217;s okay.”

Untitled design – 2026-04-29T101512.647

He Turned The Royals Into A Joke. His Take On America Is Anything But.

King Charles III

Literature

Novel

Royal Family

Lena Dunham is addressing the fallout from years-old claims that she sexually abused her younger sister, who is now identifying as &#8220;transmasculine nonbinary.&#8221;
The “Girls” creator is currently on the interview circuit promoting her new memoir, “Famesick,” which is a follow-up to her first memoir, “Not That Kind of Girl.” 
Dunham delivered a slightly different outlook when she addressed the controversy spawned by the first book in the pages of the second. 
&#8220;I was shocked when a conservative media site analyzed the book carefully, pulling choice passages and coming to the conclusion that I had engaged in sexually inappropriate childhood behavior with my sibling,&#8221; Dunham wrote in the new book, referring specifically to the media watchdog site Truth Revolt, the site where Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro served as Editor-in-Chief.
Dunham wrote that she wasn’t too worried about the backlash at first because she assumed “any logical person&#8221; would interpret the negative reaction as being &#8220;an attempt to cherrypick sections to create a narrative that spoke to the idea that I — and by extension, the majority of feminists — were not crusaders for justice but, in fact, wanton perverts.&#8221;
&#8220;I didn&#8217;t consider what I&#8217;d written to be particularly salacious,&#8221; the actress and writer went on, per <a href="https://ew.com/lena-dunham-cyrus-grace-dunham-book-controversy-11949411">Entertainment Weekly</a>. &#8220;And anyway, what about the things I hadn&#8217;t included? I&#8217;d decided against describing the time, age four, I announced to a group of near-strangers that my punishment at home for misbehavior was having &#8216;a fork stuck up my vagina.&#8217; (It was not.) I don&#8217;t know where I came up with that, but I&#8217;ve always been confused by anyone who doesn&#8217;t recognize that children are inherently innocent, and yet their imaginations are endless and deranged.&#8221;
Now, Dunham is especially sympathetic about putting the experience in print, not because she thinks it was wrong, but because it negatively impacted her sister’s journey to coming out as trans.
She noted how this situation happened just as her little sister was &#8220;sprouting wings, getting out from under the type-A straight-girl drag he&#8217;d [sic] worn for all of high school.&#8221;
&#8220;What I had been guilty of on the page, what the internet should have charged me with and given me a short sentence for, was poor phrasing — maybe a second count for TMI,&#8221; Dunham wrote in “Famesick.”
&#8220;What I was now guilty of seemed to be a laissez-faire attitude about what was mine to confess, which had derailed the life of the person I had felt most tasked with protecting.&#8221;
Dunham defended her actions as being a response to her sister being a “mystery.”
&#8220;It was ironic that as a 6-year-old, I&#8217;d wondered if he had a vagina, when what I didn&#8217;t understand for the entirety of our shared childhood was that he wasn&#8217;t my sister,&#8221; she wrote. &#8220;Eight years ago, around the time Cyrus came out as trans, he and I were still working to mend our relationship. It wasn&#8217;t just the incident around the book — since the moment I&#8217;d begun to have a public life, it had gobbled up the space around his private one, however unintentionally.&#8221;
&#8220;It didn&#8217;t help that the champagne fizz of new fame makes even the most generous people temporarily narcissistic, obsessed with their own image and its success or failure,&#8221; she admitted. &#8220;But the book had been a clear turning point, after which he seemed to feel safer being as far away as possible from the ricocheting bullets of my public persona.&#8221;
In the first book, which was released in 2014, Dunham described masturbating while lying next to her very young sister and inspecting her vagina. “My mother didn’t bother asking why I had opened Grace’s vagina,” Dunham wrote in the original book. “This was within the spectrum of things that I did.”
In another passage, she discussed trying to get her sister to “kiss her on the lips for five seconds” by offering gifts. “Basically, anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl, I was trying,” Dunham <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/05/lena-dunham-statement-abuse-claims">wrote</a>.
The backlash to these revelations put her on the defensive, with her going on a self-described “rage spiral.”
“The right-wing news story that I molested my little sister isn’t just LOL – it’s really f***ing upsetting and disgusting. And by the way, if you were a little kid and never looked at another little kid’s vagina, well, congrats to you,” she posted on X in 2014.

Lena Dunham

Lena Dunham’s First Memoir Led To Accusations Of Sexual Abuse So She Decided To Write Another

Child Sex Abuse

Entertainment

A book questioning the benefits of mass immigration is shooting to the top of the Amazon bestseller list after going viral when it was yanked from the site April 17.
All the leftists who shriek about book bans were notably silent when “The Camp of the Saints,” a 1973 dystopian novel written by French author Jean Raspail, became unavailable at the largest bookseller in the world. 
The work of fiction depicts the collapse of Western civilization after a horde of third-world migrants overtakes the country. The book’s publisher, Vauban Books, released a statement following the book being removed from Amazon on April 17.
An X post from Vauban Books on April 20 said, “On Friday, April 17th, Amazon US removed the paperback listing for our edition of Jean Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints (at this writing, the book remains available for purchase in Kindle and audiobook formats).” 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Our statement on Amazon&#8217;s suppression of The Camp of the Saints in the United States: <a href="https://t.co/JDTE5i4XbH">pic.twitter.com/JDTE5i4XbH</a>
— Vauban Books (@VaubanBooks) <a href="https://twitter.com/VaubanBooks/status/2046262858904641889?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 20, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
“We have since been informed by Amazon that the book is in violation of the company’s ‘offensive content’ policy,” the statement continued. “Amazon has supplied no information as to which portions of the book are offensive nor to whom.”
Vauban Books also noted that the book had been selling well after first being listed on Amazon in July 2025. “In the eight months since, Amazon has sold roughly 20,000 paperback copies of it.”
“The Camp of the Saints” was also said to have been “extensively reviewed in the American and international press” and found that its reviewers &#8220;have been unanimous in their assessment of its abiding importance and relevance to contemporary debates.”
“While we cannot say for certain has taken this extraordinary step, it may be no coincidence that the listing was removed one day after New York Magazine published a critical article on Vice President Vance that referenced the book.”
Following public outcry, Amazon reportedly <a href="https://x.com/VaubanBooks/status/2046621879574688215">shared a response</a> with Vauban Books courtesy of their media contact, stating, “We’ve resolved an error that briefly affected the availability of a paperback listing of The Camp of the Saints, and the title is now restored.'&#8221; 
The publisher said that Amazon &#8220;appears to be in damage control mode,&#8221; and again confirmed that the book was originally taken off the website due to their &#8220;offensive content policy.&#8221;

Amazon

Amazon Yanks Anti-Immigration Novel, Accidentally Sends It Rocketing Up The Charts

anti-immigration

Censorship

Conservatism

Fiction

Amazon Germany Services GmbH

The Return Of Wokeness? Amazon Banning Books Is Just The Start

Illegal Immigration

Leftists

Matt Walsh

Opinion

The following excerpt is taken from the new book “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/End-Road-Inside-War-Truckers/dp/1967613028/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1UP8KDOSWY3ES&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.QbLM4aRWWFaQiN9zyl11ZY2PbjV1hUeagK4cN_PVCCd3mXA_rXwetJvwK97ol4vt73RgMO-QWLZpNXWzgUZEvDVXcEIzJqyWNXFaP-izNdKFUTEistDHjnCfiXC6DAWJDN1QCVneawl8UCxe4awRI-r2RW0h52NG9rPsKvZTrCZ4m1UUaEEYUoG_y-kNjEekn6f7Zr1u29uF8C1T0oSVEkfFaOm658FFCzE4_zDOgUk.870LMXCqRYp6NNb2NIi8x2PTYsuyEBaOoPXE7ssEBno&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=end+of+the+road+gord&amp;qid=1776374636&amp;sprefix=end+of+the+road+gord+%2Caps%2C273&amp;sr=8-1">End of the Road: Inside the War on Truckers,</a>” by Gord Magill. (Creed &amp; Culture Books, 2026)
* * *
On Saturday, January 29, 2022, thousands of trucks and other vehicles from across the country entered the city of Ottawa. I was there to welcome the Western Canada convoy with a group of friends on an overpass above Highway 417, about half an hour west of the city. The truckers were animated by righteous frustration, yet I saw thousands of people full of love for one another, smiles, outbursts of hugs, and national flags attached to hockey sticks. There was even a sense of relief: it was as if a nation exhaled and exulted, “Finally, the cavalry is here to save us from our captors.” There are no words to adequately describe the feeling of everyone I interacted with on that overpass and also later when we went into Ottawa to join the party on Wellington Street.
<div id="attachment_1079819" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1079819" class="size-large wp-image-1079819" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1238067992-864x576.jpg" alt="Demonstrators gather as rows of trucks sit parked on Wellington Street during a protest near Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022. A convoy of truckers and others who oppose vaccine mandates began rolling into Ottawa on Friday, putting Canada's capital city on edge amid warnings from police that they dont know how large the protests will get. Photographer: David Kawai/Bloomberg via Getty Images" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1238067992-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1238067992-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1238067992-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1238067992.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />David Kawai/Bloomberg via Getty Images</div>
People outside Canada could tell that the cause of the Freedom Convoy was just. When I went back to America after that weekend in Ottawa, as the Convoy settled in for what would be a three-week-long winter encampment, I was amazed to find my American neighbors cheering us on in solidarity. I delivered propane and hauled logs in the weeks after I came home, and I had never seen so many Canadian flags flying in the United States. It was unbelievable.
People I met while working or otherwise traveling, upon finding out that I was a native Canadian and a trucker, would exclaim, “Good for you guys; someone had to stand up to this nonsense,” or “Man, I thought Canadians were p*ssies, but those truckers have made me change my mind about you guys.” At the time, I had been living in America for six years, and almost no one had ever said anything about where I was from. For a hot minute, I was a minor celebrity simply for being from Canada.
<div id="attachment_1079895" style="width: 778px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1079895" class="size-large wp-image-1079895" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Gord-convoy-768x576.jpg" alt="Gord Magill at Freedom Convoy." width="768" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Gord-convoy-768x576.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Gord-convoy-300x225.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Gord-convoy-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Gord-convoy.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" />Gord Magill at Freedom Convoy.</div>
Up north, however, things were not looking good for my colleagues in the protracted standoff between the truckers and a government whose officials refused to speak with them. In total, thirteen Convoys had arrived in Ottawa, and numerous protests were held at other sites across the country, most famously at Coutts, Alberta, and on the Ambassador Bridge, which connects the Canadian city of Windsor with Detroit and is the busiest of all border crossings between Canada and the U.S. Although everything was more or less peaceful—despite the outright lies and fabrications of the Canadian media about the truckers’ behavior in Ottawa—the two border-protest sites gained the attention of very powerful people outside Canada whose interests were not at risk from the hockey games, bouncy castles, and techno parties taking place in the streets of Ottawa.
<div id="attachment_1079473" style="width: 394px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/End-Road-Inside-War-Truckers/dp/1967613028/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1UP8KDOSWY3ES&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.QbLM4aRWWFaQiN9zyl11ZY2PbjV1hUeagK4cN_PVCCd3mXA_rXwetJvwK97ol4vt73RgMO-QWLZpNXWzgUZEvDVXcEIzJqyWNXFaP-izNdKFUTEistDHjnCfiXC6DAWJDN1QCVneawl8UCxe4awRI-r2RW0h52NG9rPsKvZTrCZ4m1UUaEEYUoG_y-kNjEekn6f7Zr1u29uF8C1T0oSVEkfFaOm658FFCzE4_zDOgUk.870LMXCqRYp6NNb2NIi8x2PTYsuyEBaOoPXE7ssEBno&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=end+of+the+road+gord&amp;qid=1776374636&amp;sprefix=end+of+the+road+gord+%2Caps%2C273&amp;sr=8-1"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1079473" class="size-large wp-image-1079473" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/End-of-the-Road-Jacket-Cover-384x576.jpeg" alt="Cover credit: Creed &amp; Culture" width="384" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/End-of-the-Road-Jacket-Cover-384x576.jpeg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/End-of-the-Road-Jacket-Cover-200x300.jpeg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/End-of-the-Road-Jacket-Cover-768x1152.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/End-of-the-Road-Jacket-Cover.jpeg 1000w" sizes=" (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" /></a>Cover credit: Creed &amp; Culture</div>
In Coutts, Tony Olienick had found an atmosphere similar to that which presided in Ottawa. People were peacefully assembling and saying no to the mandates that were ruining their lives. He met and spoke with Americans who had come to the Sweetgrass, Montana, side of the border and to bask in solidarity and common cause with the protesting truckers. Tony also volunteered as a sort of security detail for the protest site. It should be noted that although the government and media were claiming that the protesters had shut down the border, the crossing itself remained open for all but three days during the three weeks of the Coutts protest. Other, nearby border crossings remained open the whole time and were available for trucks to use, although with more limited hours than the normal 24/7 customs services available at Coutts. 
<div id="attachment_1079903" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1079903" class="size-large wp-image-1079903" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Gord-convoy-II-1024x576.jpg" alt="Gord Magill personal archive" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Gord-convoy-II-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Gord-convoy-II-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Gord-convoy-II-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Gord-convoy-II.jpg 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Gord Magill personal archive</div>
The perception that Coutts was closed, along with the growing protest at the Ambassador Bridge in Ontario, which forced most truck traffic to cross at the Bluewater Bridge between Sarnia and Port Huron, was useful for those who were antagonistic to the aims of the Convoy. Wild and unsubstantiated claims about the cost to the economy were thrown around, mostly based on guesstimates made by business associations. Were there delays at those other crossings from diverted traffic? Obviously, and they were sometimes substantial. Did the protests cause delays in shipments and disruptions to the fragile nature of just-in-time delivery schedules for automakers? Of course. Yet not one of those who complained about the supposed costs of the Convoy ever compared these guesstimated costs to the costs to the entire world from the madness of the COVID regime, which lasted the better part of three years, not three weeks, and was solely the responsibility of government, not of citizens who wanted their lives back.
<div id="attachment_1079811" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1079811" class="size-large wp-image-1079811" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1238303996-864x576.jpg" alt="TOPSHOT - Supporters of the Truckers Convoy against the Covid-19 vaccine mandate block traffic in the Canada bound lanes of the Ambassador Bridge border crossing, in Windsor, Ontario on February 8, 2022. - The protestors have blocked traffic in the Canada bound lanes since Monday evening. Approximately $323 million worth of goods cross the Windsor-Detroit border each day at the Ambassador Bridge making it North Americas busiest international border crossing. (Photo by Geoff Robins / AFP) (Photo by GEOFF ROBINS/AFP via Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1238303996-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1238303996-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1238303996-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1238303996.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />GEOFF ROBINS/AFP via Getty Images</div>
The whining of the automotive industry, one of the most powerful corporate interest groups in America, got the attention of the Biden Administration. Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, got the ear of Trudeau’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, who set up a call between Trudeau and Biden on February 11, 2022. It is believed that this phone call set the wheels in motion for the ultimate crackdown on the Convoy.
Biden’s White House put out a statement about the call with Trudeau, and it is worth a read:
<blockquote>Today President Biden spoke with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada to discuss the ongoing blockade of key bridges and crossings between the United States and Canada, including Detroit/Windsor, Sweetwater/Coutts, and Pembina/Emerson. The two leaders agreed that the actions of the individuals who are obstructing travel and commerce between our two countries are having significant direct impacts on citizens’ lives and livelihoods. The President expressed his concern that U.S. companies and workers are experiencing serious effects, including slowdowns in production, shortened work hours, and plant closures. The Prime Minister promised quick action in enforcing the law, and the President thanked him for the steps he and other Canadian authorities are taking to restore the open passage of bridges to the United States. (Bold mine)</blockquote>
Significant direct impacts on citizens’ lives and livelihoods. Oh, like the long nightmare of the COVID regime?
The Coutts border crossing was only ever fully closed for three days, and two other border crossings were available to use. There are no automotive plants in that part of the prairie on either side of the border, and the only road closure that took place anywhere near Coutts was of Alberta Provincial Highway 4 at Milk River, a few miles north of Coutts; it was closed by the RCMP, not the protesters. In any case, the protest at Coutts was about to become the centerpiece of Trudeau’s rationale for the invocation of the Emergencies Act, whose outrageous violations of basic liberties included throwing an innocent trucker in jail, where he remains three-and-a-half years later at the time of this writing.
<div id="attachment_1079823" style="width: 886px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1079823" class="size-large wp-image-1079823" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1238618687-876x576.jpg" alt="A line of police push protesters back on February 19, 2022 in Ottawa, Canada. - Police in Canada deployed to dislodge the final truckers and protesters from downtown Ottawa, aimed at bringing an end to three weeks of demonstrations over Covid-19 health rules. Ottawa police, who pledged the operation would push ahead &quot;until residents and citizens have their city back,&quot; were still working to clear the capital's streets. (Photo by Dave Chan / AFP) (Photo by DAVE CHAN/AFP via Getty Images)" width="876" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1238618687-876x576.jpg 876w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1238618687-300x197.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1238618687-768x505.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1238618687.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 876px) 100vw, 876px" />DAVE CHAN/AFP via Getty Images</div>
By this time, the Freedom Convoy protest sites were crawling with undercover officers, or UCOs, who poked around looking for any hint of illegal activity or actionable intelligence that could be used against the protesters. Meanwhile, the federal government was waging a media smear campaign later found to have been planned by the staff of Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino. This campaign failed to dent the widespread support the Convoy had in Canada and around the world: almost everyone except the most hopelessly naïve saw right through a staged Nazi flag photo and the usual tiresome accusations of white nationalism and racism. Anyone who went to a Freedom Convoy site to avail themselves of reality unmediated by state propaganda was surrounded by solidarity, happiness, and a genuine outpouring of love. Trudeau was losing the PR battle. He needed scapegoats. He searched for a pretext for invoking the Emergencies Act, something he had been considering since the early days of the protest but couldn’t pull off because those damn truckers were so well behaved. Allegations from UCOs at Coutts would give Trudeau everything he needed.
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Originally hailing from Hamilton, Ontario, Gord Magill has spent most of his life behind the wheel. From spinning along the ice roads of Canada’s Northwest Territories, to hauling logs down volcanos in New Zealand, to steering Road Trains across the outback of Western Australia, to running freight along the interstates of America, Gord has spent over twenty-five years trucking all over the world. His writing about the industry has appeared in Newsweek, the American Conservative, and American Affairs, among other outlets. Magill lives in Ithaca, New York.
The excerpt from “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/End-Road-Inside-War-Truckers/dp/1967613028/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1UP8KDOSWY3ES&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.QbLM4aRWWFaQiN9zyl11ZY2PbjV1hUeagK4cN_PVCCd3mXA_rXwetJvwK97ol4vt73RgMO-QWLZpNXWzgUZEvDVXcEIzJqyWNXFaP-izNdKFUTEistDHjnCfiXC6DAWJDN1QCVneawl8UCxe4awRI-r2RW0h52NG9rPsKvZTrCZ4m1UUaEEYUoG_y-kNjEekn6f7Zr1u29uF8C1T0oSVEkfFaOm658FFCzE4_zDOgUk.870LMXCqRYp6NNb2NIi8x2PTYsuyEBaOoPXE7ssEBno&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=end+of+the+road+gord&amp;qid=1776374636&amp;sprefix=end+of+the+road+gord+%2Caps%2C273&amp;sr=8-1">End of the Road: Inside the War on Truckers</a>” by Gord Magill is published by permission of Creed &amp; Culture Books. Copyright 2026 Gord Magill. Chapter 13: The Truckers Strike Back.

TOPSHOT-CANADA-HEALTH-VIRUS-PROTEST

I Was There For The Freedom Convoy — And The Crackdown That Followed

End Of The Road: Inside The War On Truckers

Canada

COVID

Joe Biden

Justin Trudeau

Trucker Convoy

Truckers

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is facing scrutiny after new federal filings revealed his own political operation spent more than $1.5 million purchasing copies of his memoir, accounting for the majority of its total sales.
According to disclosures released Wednesday, Newsom’s PAC, the Campaign for Democracy, paid $1,561,875 to a book distributor to buy and distribute roughly 67,000 copies of his book, “Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery.” Those copies were then offered to donors in exchange for contributions of any amount.
The strategy proved effective in driving engagement. Tens of thousands of supporters responded to the pitch, with the PAC ultimately distributing books that made up roughly two-thirds of the memoir’s total print sales, which stand at just over 97,000 copies.
The arrangement raises questions about how Newsom’s book achieved its early commercial success. His team had previously touted strong sales and highlighted the memoir’s appearance on best-seller lists, including USA Today and New York Times <a href="http://lists.in/">lists</a>. In a March press release, the Newsom team <a href="https://x.com/briantylercohen/status/2029377086197252130">wrote</a>, “With more than 91,000 copies sold through organic, in-person and online, non-bulk purchases in the United States, the memoir surged on bestseller lists within hours of its release and has drawn readers from across the country eager to learn more about Newsom’s upbringing, early career, and the experiences that shaped his approach to leadership.”
Newsom’s office defended the approach, arguing the effort was both financially and politically effective. “We were thrilled with the response,” spokesman Nathan Click <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/16/us/politics/newsom-book-donors.html">told</a> The New York Times, adding that the PAC ultimately raised more money through the promotion than it spent on purchasing the books. “Our goal was to deepen the relationship between him and the millions of folks who have already expressed support.” Newsom does not receive royalties from books sold through the PAC.
The fundraising push began shortly after Newsom-backed Proposition 50, a redistricting measure designed to give Democrats an advantage in congressional maps, was approved by California voters. In emails to supporters, Newsom framed the book offer as part of a broader effort to replenish political resources for future electoral fights.
“We just spent a bunch of money on passing Prop 50,” he wrote at the time, “so now I need to refill the coffers … for the fights ahead.”
While it is not uncommon for political committees to use books as fundraising incentives, the scale of Newsom’s operation stands out. Comparable efforts have typically involved far smaller expenditures, including purchases tied to books by former Vice President Kamala Harris, whose affiliated PAC spent under $100,000 on similar promotions for her memoir earlier this year.
By contrast, Newsom’s seven-figure outlay represents the largest single expense for his PAC in the first quarter of 2026.
The arrangement blurs the line between political fundraising and self-promotion, effectively allowing a campaign apparatus to manufacture demand for a candidate’s personal publication. Supporters, however, contend the tactic is a “novel” extension of campaign outreach — using a candidate’s writing to engage voters while building a donor base.
The episode underscores how political campaigns are increasingly blending media, messaging, and fundraising into a single ecosystem, where books serve not just as policy platforms or autobiographical accounts, but as tools for mobilization and revenue generation.
For Newsom, the result is a memoir that reached best-seller status with significant backing from his own political network, raising questions about how success in the publishing world can or should be measured when politics and promotion are so closely intertwined.

California Governor Gavin Newsom Continues Book Tour In San Francisco

Did Gavin Newsom Pen A Best Seller? Not Really.

California

Elections

Gavin Newsom

Politics

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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Laura Ingalls Wilder fans, myself included, have awaited Netflix’s new version of her iconic &#8220;Little House on the Prairie&#8221; story with both trepidation and tempered excitement. When the show airs on July 9, will it be a close adaptation to the novel? Will it incorporate more of the history of the real Ingalls family? Will it resemble the 50-year-old series directed by and starring Michael Landon? 
As a scholar of both Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, I’ve placed my cautious hopes on fidelity to the books with inclusions of details from real life that Wilder chose to leave out of her novels. Netflix’s teaser for its new version of “Little House on the Prairie,” released Monday, provides enough tantalizing scenes to make both fans of the books and fans of the original series wonder about the show’s direction and overall vision. It’s an intriguing bite, promising some fidelity to the novel but also completely new story lines. Despite my personal preference for faithful book adaptations, I’m willing to give it a chance.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Here is your first official look at Little House on the Prairie.
Meet the Ingalls family as they discover what “home” really means. Little House on the Prairie, based on the beloved books, premieres July 9, only on Netflix. <a href="https://t.co/epUjaJL3RG">pic.twitter.com/epUjaJL3RG</a>
— Netflix (@netflix) <a href="https://twitter.com/netflix/status/2043705772215865730?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 13, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Appropriately enough, Laura’s voiceover begins with the same phrase that opens &#8220;Little House in the Big Woods,&#8221; the first novel in the autobiographical fiction Little House series, written by Laura Ingalls Wilder in 1932: &#8220;Once upon a time&#8230;&#8221; Beginning the novel and now the new series with these words evokes a fairy tale quality, which the video sequence and the music behind the words support. So far, so good. Laura’s voiceover offers a preview of the new series that is an apt summary of the book:
<blockquote>Once upon a time, Ma and Pa and Mary and Laura left the Big Woods of Wisconsin and moved to the prairie, where a new life was waiting for them. Every day and every night was an adventure. And even though they were all alone, and very small against the sky and the stars, they were happy because they were a family – and they were together.</blockquote>
The video sequence depicts the Ingalls family leaving the Big Woods by wagon, majestic scenes of a prairie with a river cutting through it, and a town teeming with people where the Ingalls girls, wearing straw hats, step out of their covered wagon and into the dusty streets. Laura exchanges glances with another child, perhaps meant to be from the Osage tribe, and Mary shares a longing look with a teenaged boy. Other scenes feature Laura and Pa running through a cornfield, Pa and Ma rolling a log, probably to build their cabin, and Pa joyfully swinging Ma around inside the completed “little house.” The emotional roller coaster continues as Pa looks at a distraught Ma with tears in his eyes and the girls giggle while wearing flower crowns. The final scenes show the Ingalls family around a campfire against the backdrop of an enormous Kansas sky filled with stars while Pa plays his fiddle. All in all, more positives than negatives.
The teaser is a complete package, introducing the characters, the story background, the location, and important themes of adventure, isolation (despite the town scene), family togetherness, and love. The music is fast-paced and vaguely 19th-century in tone, while the scenes form a rapid montage of both iconic and tantalizing images proclaiming that this version of “Little House on the Prairie” is something altogether new, neither a “by the book” rendition nor a reboot of the classic series that premiered in 1974 and lasted for 12 years.
Predictably, fans of both the books and the classic series have raised calls of alarm over the Netflix trailer and details that have leaked out. On the “Little House on the Prairie” Facebook group page, members declare their undying loyalty to the original series, expressing doubt that departing from Michael Landon’s story lines will benefit the new show. 
Some posts declare it scandalous that the Olesons don’t appear to be part of the Netflix series. Never mind that the Oleson family is not introduced in the &#8220;Little House on the Prairie&#8221; novel, only in the following book, &#8220;On the Banks of Plum Creek,&#8221; where they own the town mercantile. A “Little House” show without Harriet, Nels, Nellie, and Willie is beyond imagination for Landon “Little House” loyalists, as is a town that is not Walnut Grove, Minnesota. But the original television series sowed the seeds of its fans&#8217; confusion regarding the location and storyline of the Netflix version of “Little House on the Prairie.” It used the title Wilder employed for her book about the Ingalls’ pioneer days in Kansas, but centered the story on Wilder’s book about the family’s years along Plum Creek in southwest Minnesota, near the town of Walnut Grove.
Laura fans (many of whom happily call themselves “bonnetheads”) are hoping for a rendition of the story that runs much closer to the Little House books or the real lives of the Ingalls family than that offered by Michael Landon. However, the Netflix trailer appears to reveal a different intent. There are some bothersome inconsistencies with the novel. Netflix Mary’s hair is definitely not blonde. The girls should be wearing cloth bonnets, not straw hats. Their ages are all wrong, and where is Baby Carrie?
Both sets of Laura fans have missed the pivotal moment in cultural literacy that the Netflix series represents.  The “Little House” story and characters have become so iconic since their first appearance in 1932 that the details of how the story is told can be changed without altering the characterization, the overarching story, and, most importantly, its themes or lessons. 
The themes of all three “Little House on the Prairie” versions are the same: simple, family-focused pleasures and adventures in a new land of opportunity that will require hard work and perseverance from its new residents. In a speech to the Detroit Book Fair in 1937, Laura Ingalls Wilder explained her motivation for writing the Little House series. “I wanted the children now to understand more about the beginning of things, to know what is behind the things they see — what it is that made America as they know it.”
Based on the just-released teaser, Netflix’s version of “Little House on the Prairie” seems poised to tell Wilder’s story, though the strands it weaves together might not be the same ones used by Michael Landon in the original television series or by Wilder herself. Even for a purist like myself, Netflix’s new way of telling an old story might be just right.
***
Dedra McDonald Birzer is director and editor-in-chief at the South Dakota Historical Society Press and a lecturer in history at Hillsdale College. She serves on the executive boards of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Pageant Society and the Middle West Review. She is currently writing an intellectual biography of Rose Wilder Lane.

Little House on the Prairie

A Beloved Pioneer Story Returns, But Early Clues Suggest A Different Direction

The following is an excerpt from the new book ​​”<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Poisoned-Ivies-Academic-Americas-Universities/dp/1668087537/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.j306CWFwpsasj544DoZskg.x7d6MxQNY3W7C4_i3nSg1CNXwSThLN55XNmuxbmamSE&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;qid=1776193998&amp;refinements=p_27%3AElise+Stefanik&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-1&amp;text=Elise+Stefanik">Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America&#8217;s Elite Universities</a>,” by Elise Stefanik (Threshold Editions, April 14, 2026)
* * *
America’s higher education system is in the midst of a historic reckoning. The compact that existed for generations between our republic, the American people, and our institutions of higher learning has irrevocably broken down. Universities once dedicated to the pursuit of truth and academic excellence have become centers of radical political indoctrination—all while being generously subsidized by hardworking American taxpayers.
Americans of both parties, college-educated and non-college-educated, have lost faith in our universities at a staggering pace. A September 2025 Gallup poll revealed an astonishing trend; only about one-third (35 percent) of Americans today think that a college education is “very important.” That’s a rapid drop from 2019, when 53 percent of Americans agreed with that proposition. In 2010, it was 75 percent.
This hasn’t happened in a vacuum. Colleges and universities across the country have actively undermined their standing in the public imagination. They have chosen to embolden the most radical members of their faculty and staff. They have forced the divisive and discriminatory “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) regime as gospel. They have proactively silenced and canceled students and teachers who disagree with the groupthink progressive political agenda.
Just look at the data. Democrat faculty outnumber Republicans by at least eight-to-one at any major university. And political bias isn’t the only troubling issue. More than one-third (34 percent) of college students now say “using violence to stop campus speech” is acceptable. This is an absolutely stunning statistic and even more disturbing after the nation saw the horrific footage of Charlie Kirk’s assassination on a university campus during one of his iconic college tours where the main purpose of the event was to engage in respectful discourse and peaceful debate. Many on the Left, including some Democrat elected officials, viciously celebrated the loss of this young man’s life, saying it was somehow justified and deserved. This is a deeply disturbing and dangerous turning point for our national fabric and political culture.
<div id="attachment_1077721" style="width: 391px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Poisoned-Ivies-Academic-Americas-Universities/dp/1668087537"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1077721" class="size-large wp-image-1077721" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Stefanik-book-381x576.jpg" alt="Cover credit: Threshold Editions" width="381" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Stefanik-book-381x576.jpg 381w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Stefanik-book-199x300.jpg 199w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Stefanik-book-768x1160.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Stefanik-book.jpg 993w" sizes=" (max-width: 381px) 100vw, 381px" /></a>Cover credit: Threshold Editions</div>
Activism has come at the cost of education. Students are not learning the skills in the classroom that once defined a college graduate. Not only are they showing up academically unprepared, but they are leaving uneducated, unemployable, radicalized, and deeply out of touch with American values. Approximately one-third of college students require remedial classes before they begin earning credits. But once they start taking classes, grade inflation is worse than ever. They know less, but get better grades, than previous generations. More than 60 percent of college students admit to cheating.
Meanwhile, college tuition has increased at a preposterous rate as the value of a degree has declined. The average college student leaves school saddled with $40,000 of debt. A mere 30 percent of 2025 college graduates found entry-level jobs in their chosen field, while nearly half felt unprepared even to apply for entry-level jobs.
The American people are smart. We know that something has gone catastrophically wrong, and we are tired of being asked to foot the exorbitant bill on autopilot for a broken system that morphs students into anti-American zealots.
This didn’t happen overnight. The tremors leading up to this earthquake have offered warning signs for decades. An education system that was the envy of the world is now facing questions of its importance, quality, and meaning. A course correction is long overdue—so overdue, in fact, that the questions are no longer about minor improvements and reform; they have become existential. Questions such as: Are American colleges educating or indoctrinating? Can higher education even be reformed, or do we need to completely rebuild it from scratch? What is being taught in the classrooms, and why? When colleges and universities lose their way, how do we hold them accountable? How much foreign money is funding American higher education? Is a traditional college education even remotely worth the absurdly out-of-reach tuition price tag? Are these “elite” colleges and universities even worth saving? Americans are right to ask these hard questions. And the toughest questions are being posed to the most “elite” schools.
The most prestigious colleges and universities in America make up what is known colloquially as the Ivy League. The Ivy League, nestled in the Northeast and scattered across New England, is made up of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, Brown, and Cornell. While each university has its own distinct character with unique qualities, these institutions taken as a group have historically been considered the bellwether and compass of American higher education. They set the standards and norms that other universities aspire to achieve, not just in the United States, but around the world.
Historically, Ivy League colleges were known for their institutional prestige, academic excellence, esteemed faculty, rigorous and extremely selective admissions processes, groundbreaking research, and extraordinarily successful alumni networks. Attending an Ivy League school was supposed to guarantee professional success for graduates. They were the crown jewels of the entire higher education system worldwide. For generations, admission to an Ivy League school meant winning a golden ticket to the American dream.
Today, that once-pristine reputation has been sullied. Most Americans understand the Ivy League schools as something different. Instead of bastions of knowledge and vibrant intellectual life, they are considered hotbeds of radical ideology, groundless elitism, intellectual laziness, and anti-American hatred. The reputation of these schools has declined dramatically. It has been poisoned.
This process of institutional decay, almost entirely self-inflicted, culminated in a once-in-a-generation congressional hearing on antisemitism with university presidents in December 2023. This was the moment Americans decided that enough was enough. Our universities were failing us and our next generation of leaders.
At that hearing, a single line of questioning revealed the depths of the moral and academic rot in higher education. The presidents of Harvard, University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were asked to testify before Congress on the wave of antisemitism on their campuses after Hamas’s terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. One question went viral and quickly became the most viewed congressional testimony in United States history. It was truly the hearing heard around the world. 
I know because I asked the question. 
“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your university’s code of conduct on bullying or harassment?” This was not a political question. It was a moral one. I thought it would be the easiest, most straightforward question of the hearing. I assumed their answers would be a resounding yes. But to my shock, the presidents of MIT, UPenn, and Harvard, arguably the most prestigious universities in the world, answered one after another deadpan and nearly verbatim: “It depends on the context.” And the world heard.
<div id="attachment_1077739" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1077739" class="size-large wp-image-1077739" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1825446548-864x576.jpg" alt="Representative Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, during a House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023. Lawmakers on the education committee will grill the leaders of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about their responses to protests that erupted after the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. Photographer: Haiyun Jiang/Bloomberg via Getty Images" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1825446548-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1825446548-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1825446548-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1825446548.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Haiyun Jiang/Bloomberg via Getty Images</div>
Their morally bankrupt answers astonished everyone who heard them, including me. These university presidents were supposed to be some of the most learned, intelligent people in America, if not the entire world. They were the people responsible for teaching the next generation of leaders in every field imaginable. They were the leaders of the most prestigious universities in the world. My immediate reaction was apparent to everyone watching. I couldn’t hide my shock. I questioned them further, asking them to elaborate on what they meant—giving them an opportunity to correct the record and state the obvious. And still, they refused to give a clear statement. They refused to state clearly that calling for the genocide of Jews violated their universities’ codes of conduct.
I knew immediately that this was a significant hearing. I didn’t realize in the moment, however, that it would become a historic earthquake that instantly reshaped the debate on higher education overnight. The hearing changed the trajectory of higher education. In the weeks and months that followed, campuses exploded into riotous antisemitic encampments. Subpoenas poured into campuses as Congress opened multiple investigations. Scandal-plagued university presidents and compromised trustees resigned. Campus chaos shaped a presidential election.
Today, as a result of this hearing, elite campuses are in the midst of a generational upheaval. Governance structures are in question. Faculty and curricula are under scrutiny. Billions of dollars in foreign funding have been exposed. The long-standing relationship between the federal government and universities is being revised. Matriculation trends are shifting. Nothing is the same.
Nor should it be. Our hearing reset the course of American higher education. It was a reset that I firmly believe was long overdue.
This book tells the inside story of what is happening on America’s campuses and why. It goes in depth, with an insider’s view, into the deep moral and intellectual rot in higher education. What began as a question about antisemitism triggered a watershed moment.
In the long term, the hearing lit the match for not only accountability, but a far-reaching educational reform movement that has only just begun. This very dark chapter for American colleges and universities can and must lead to light at the end of the tunnel. Our institutions of higher learning have fundamentally lost their way. They strayed far from their founding missions and grew nearly unrecognizable. But that does not mean that the American people have to settle for this rotted and poisoned status quo.
We can and must fix our higher education system and return our colleges and universities to their founding mission. It is within the American people’s power to correct when these schools fundamentally lose their way. And it is our responsibility to ensure that we are educating and not indoctrinating our next generation of leaders. Our colleges and universities should promote academic excellence, intellectual inquiry, and our nation’s highest ideals, not left-wing indoctrination, heinous antisemitism, and anti-Americanism. That’s why it is important to look at what went wrong in this particular moment in history in painstaking detail. By seeing where and why our most elite schools failed, we can chart a better course for the future.
* * *
This excerpt is taken from ​​”<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Poisoned-Ivies-Academic-Americas-Universities/dp/1668087537/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.j306CWFwpsasj544DoZskg.x7d6MxQNY3W7C4_i3nSg1CNXwSThLN55XNmuxbmamSE&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;qid=1776193998&amp;refinements=p_27%3AElise+Stefanik&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-1&amp;text=Elise+Stefanik">Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America&#8217;s Elite Universities</a>,” by Elise Stefanik. Copyright © 2026 by Elise Stefanik. Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon &amp; Schuster, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

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Elise Stefanik: The Moment The Ivy League Lost The Country

antisemitism

Claudine Gay

Congress

Harvard University

Jewish

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

U.S. House of Representatives

University of Pennsylvania

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
Last year 40% of Americans <a href="https://bookriot.com/american-reading-habits-2025/">didn’t read</a> a single book. Print book sales are rising, but not necessarily in any return to tradition; a printed book is a useful prop that can be held up to the camera for TikTok. Responding to ever greater challenges, the publishing industry is nevertheless a lot more ideologically homogenous than it used to be, and it doesn’t much care about you or me.
But who’s <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/black-pilled">black-pilling</a>? We still love books, and we’re not giving up. Every day, new authors and publishers are turning out books for varying kinds of right-of-center audiences. It’s hard to stand out in an ocean of content, though, given that conservative outlets notorious for grousing about the culture never review right-wing authors’ contributions to it — until now.
So, here are three thrillers by authors who don’t hate us.
<a href="https://ark.press/products/american-paladin-standard-edition">&#8220;American Paladin&#8221;</a> by Larry Correia
Larry Correia is underreviewed and complains about it, which sounds like egotism until you remember the man has sold so many books that he has literally purchased a mountain. Correia is best known for his flagship series &#8220;Monster Hunter: International,&#8221; wherein private contractors fight monsters and make money off of government bounties. Like many War on Terror-era thrillers, its hero is well-funded and aided by powerful individuals and organizations. Women fantasize about well-off romantic interests desperately attracted to them; men fantasize about well-paid, cool jobs that buy them guns.
&#8220;American Paladin&#8221; goes the opposite way. Mike Spears is poor, inexpert, and unlucky. For years, he&#8217;s been desperately trying to hunt the supernatural, but it isn&#8217;t biting. When he was a teenager, he and his loved ones unknowingly wandered across the veil between worlds. Only Mike survived to make it home. Now the monsters and unholy cultists that are the subject of his desired revenge stubbornly refuse to show up. As consolation, he&#8217;s turned vigilante to hunt human predators instead.
When a podcaster&#8217;s unwelcome attention threatens to draw attention to his work, Mike finds the podcaster in the crosshairs of the other side he&#8217;s hunted all these years. Now the two of them are running and gunning for their lives against the enemy Mike has sought all his life.
Correia is always dependable at delivering action, but the real pleasure here is the setting. &#8220;American Paladin&#8221; offers a refreshing world of elusive cryptids, mysterious lands, and conspiracy-minded schizos trying to make sense of it all. Its magic and monsters feel genuinely eerie, and its hero stands out by being capable but entirely uncredentialed. Mike Spears has no cool resume; he never finished high school, never went to war, and at one point in the book encounters a gun he is unable to identify immediately. Fans of cryptid lore should get a kick out of this working hero in America&#8217;s lonely places. Mike Spears belongs on the weird adventure shelf beside F. Paul Wilson&#8217;s Repairman Jack.
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/AMERICAN-APOCALYPSE-Second-American-Civil-ebook/dp/B0FBG264CD">&#8220;American Apocalypse: The Second American Civil War&#8221;</a> by Kurt Schlichter
There are an awful lot of right-wing books about American civil wars and their aftermaths. Most of them are heavy on red meat and bluster, Kurt Schlichter&#8217;s own Kelly Turnbull series included. So it&#8217;s an unexpected and interesting choice to see Schlichter consciously imitate Studs Terkel and fictional treatments such as Max Brooks&#8217;s &#8220;World War Z&#8221; to recount an American Civil War from a mostly ant&#8217;s-eye view, in the form of first-person reminiscences from a variety of participants.
Some of these are more effective than others. Like most right-of-center authors, Schlichter isn&#8217;t any more convincing writing leftists than lefty writers are at writing conservatives. A widowed mother trying to survive, a cold-blooded hitman who wanted the war to keep going because he loved doing targeted killings, and unreconstructed leftists in exile all speak with the same voice. Worse, they&#8217;re all covering a similar general arc. While Schlichter divides his book into three sections covering different periods of the war, in practice each individual tells their whole story of the war from beginning to end. It gets a little redundant.
Unlike a lot of right-wing civil war fiction, though, &#8220;American Apocalypse&#8221; is realistic enough to draw a portrait of a brutish war that&#8217;s far from the easy victory you frequently see braggadocious right-wingers assume on social media. Spoiler: Team Right wins, but it&#8217;s extremely ugly and the result winds up being <a href="https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/278/">American Francoism</a>, which also makes the book notable as a yardstick of sentiment of the right-of-center type that doesn&#8217;t want American Francoism and wouldn&#8217;t advocate for it but might be willing to live under it if they didn&#8217;t have to shoulder any moral responsibility for it.
A lot of right-wing authors cover similar subject matter, but none with Kurt Schlichter&#8217;s out-of-the-box approach. It doesn&#8217;t succeed as well as it might have, but it&#8217;s encouraging to see the effort.
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Causes-Richard-Nichols/dp/B09KNGF7XN">&#8220;Lost Causes&#8221;</a> by Richard Nichols
&#8220;Lost Causes&#8221; opens simply enough: When a British operator desperately breaks cover to get a warning out, only to be cut down by gunfire mid-call, the bureaucrats put the kibosh on any attempt at a rescue or retrieval. So the operator&#8217;s commanding officer turns to MI11, aka the Mill, a secret branch of British intelligence whose job is specifically killing people and breaking their stuff. The catch: MI11 is about to be disbanded, so its operative, code-named John Buchan (in a hat-tip to the author of &#8220;The Thirty-Nine Steps&#8221;), has only a few days before his support evaporates entirely.
You can figure out mostly how it goes from there because &#8220;Lost Causes&#8221; is an old-school kind of thriller. And I&#8217;m not complaining about that: Nichols, more power to him for it, is clearly writing the kind of thriller he loves to read with elements that publishers aren&#8217;t as interested in buying. That&#8217;s what indie books are for. Some action scenes are quite good, notably one where the captured hero has to fight his way through a bunch of armed men in a moving car.
Unfortunately, a lot also plays much less well. Interweaved flashbacks are too long and too dull, and the present-day digressions are worse. &#8220;Lost Causes&#8221; is awash in musings about the importance of rough men, the decadence of modern life, and the selfishness of baby boomers. A little red meat is nice, but Nichols serves it up in such quantities that the lions in the Circus Maximus would say &#8220;all right, already.&#8221; The lengthy monologue about the perfidiousness of baby boomers is delivered by the bad guy — as justification for his villainy because he&#8217;s a baby boomer! Even a reader completely in agreement with the author&#8217;s sentiments will find himself hoping Nichols will just get on with it. At its best, &#8220;Lost Causes&#8221; is just okay. It&#8217;s worth a read for aspiring novelists; seeing Nichols&#8217;s successes and missteps will help give them a better sense of what works and what doesn&#8217;t.
***
David Hines has a background in forensic science and international human rights, has written for the Federalist and the American Conservative, and loves books. Possibly even yours.

Detail of the hand of a man while reading a book.

The Books Mainstream Publishing Won’t Push Are Finding An Audience Anyway

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
For years, progressives have been shrieking about book bans, insisting conservatives want to pull classics from library shelves or burn fantasy novels for promoting witchcraft. It was always a straw man. 
The real fight was never about classic literature; it was about books like &#8220;Gender Queer,&#8221; which includes illustrations of oral sex and masturbation, and which <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/over-90-of-voters-say-sexually-explicit-images-in-gender-queer-are-inappropriate-poll">90% of voters</a> in a 2023 poll said was inappropriate for public school libraries. Or it was about “This Book Is Gay,” which introduces dating apps to teenagers.
Those books are undeniably gross, but they do have exactly one redeeming quality: They are obvious. If your kid came home with a copy of &#8220;Gender Queer&#8221; or &#8220;This Book Is Gay,&#8221; it would immediately signal that it was time to attend a school board meeting.
But there&#8217;s a much more dangerous form of young adult literature out there, and it&#8217;s lurking behind an intentionally deceptive cover that&#8217;s meant to trick parents into thinking everything is fine.
Rebecca Bendheim, the author of a YA book for teen readers, posted on social media about deliberately designing the cover art to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/author-proudly-says-she-made-book-cover-gay-enough-for-kids-but-invisible-to-parents">hide the book&#8217;s theme</a> from parents while simultaneously advertising it to children.
&#8220;When Penguin [Random House] asked me what I wanted for my cover, I said I wanted it to be gay enough for queer kids and teens to clock it, but for homophobic parents to just think it&#8217;s a friendship story,&#8221; the author and middle school teacher bragged on Instagram.
The book is called &#8220;When You&#8217;re Brave Enough&#8221; and was released on Tuesday. According to the publisher, it is recommended for children ages 10–14.
&#8220;So I said, no holding hands, make my character look gay,&#8221; Bendheim explained. She went on to point out subtle details she and the cover artist agreed on, including flowers growing between the pair to represent a crush that&#8217;s &#8220;growing.&#8221;
In a follow-up video, Bendheim showed her book cover to random people on the street to see if they could guess what it was about.
 &#8220;Shoutout to the people who answered and to librarians who help kids and teens find subtle queer books if they need them,&#8221; she wrote in the caption. &#8220;I&#8217;m a firm believer that positive representation saves lives!! Would you be able to tell?&#8221;
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Bendheim&#8217;s approach is insidious for what it hides. But other YA authors aren&#8217;t bothering to hide anything at all.
A &#8220;Good Morning America&#8221; YA Book Club selection, &#8220;Sibylline,&#8221; apparently includes graphic sex scenes depicting necrophilia, threesomes, and rape, with no warnings for unsuspecting parents.
The novel, written by Melissa de la Cruz, is advertised as &#8220;a heart-stopping dark academia romantasy series&#8221; in the YA genre. Typically, these books are aimed at middle and high school children, with characters around that same age range. &#8220;Sibylline&#8221; was published on February 3.
When the main character Atticus dies, two other characters attempt to revive him by engaging in sexual acts with his apparently lifeless body. The scene — presented from the perspective of the dying character — depicts a graphic, non-consensual sexual encounter between all three characters. There are no content warnings anywhere on the book.
The book has been earning mostly one-star reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, with readers noting the themes are wildly inappropriate for its target audience.
&#8220;The audience is children and there are graphic descriptions of sexual acts between characters. Yes, the characters are older. No, they&#8217;re not always consenting,&#8221; one reviewer wrote.
&#8220;The main three characters participate in a threesome that is graphic, and this book is listed as appropriate for 9th through 12th graders, which is completely insane,&#8221; another said. &#8220;If we think that it&#8217;s appropriate to market sex — let alone a threesome — to 12-year-olds, there&#8217;s a serious problem in this industry.&#8221;
Child sexualization used to be something the culture at least pretended to oppose. The exploitative imagery around a teenage Britney Spears, the Calvin Klein ads featuring a 15-year-old Brooke Shields — society claimed to reckon with all of it. So why have people in the publishing industry decided those lessons don&#8217;t apply to them?
The answer, it turns out, is that some of the people running that industry don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s a problem here.
Andrew Karre is an executive editor at Penguin Random House&#8217;s Dutton Books for Young Readers, the same publishing house behind &#8220;When You&#8217;re Brave Enough.&#8221; In an <a href="https://pen.org/andrew-karre-interview/">interview</a> with PEN America published in November 2025, he was remarkably candid about his worldview.
&#8220;Once you approach it that way, what is a part of teenage experience?&#8221; Karre said. &#8220;Sex. Whether actually having it or imagining having it, sex is inextricable from 13- to 19-year-olds.&#8221;
He went further, saying that a YA publishing industry without sexual content was essentially unimaginable.
&#8220;If, all of a sudden, it became impossible to publish YA novels with sex in them, I think it would effectively become impossible to publish YA novels as I understand them,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s hyperbolic at all.&#8221;
Karre also argued that since teenagers will encounter sex anyway through what he called &#8220;ethically problematic&#8221; avenues like pornography, books serve as a healthier medium to instruct them. Those who would prefer sexual content removed from YA books, in his view, are simply making an error.
He speaks for an industry that seems to indicate it knows better than parents what children should be reading.
This all amounts to a multifaceted attack on parental authority. On one side, authors and publishers are deliberately designing books to slip past parents&#8217; radars with cover art engineered to look innocent. On the other, you have publishers saturating the YA market with graphic sexual content that has no warnings, all in service of providing instruction to sex-curious teens.
The Supreme Court <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/im-one-of-the-moms-who-just-won-at-the-supreme-court-heres-why-we-fought">pushed back</a> last year. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Court ruled 6-3 that parents retain a constitutional right to shield their children from objectionable material in public schools. That ruling was a start, but it doesn’t solve the problem of YA publishers believing they have the moral duty to impart sexual instruction on minors.
Parents need to know these books exist, and they need to keep speaking out against them. The publishing industry has made it abundantly clear it’s not censoring anything.

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Inside The Push To Get Explicit Content In Front Of Kids Without Parents Knowing

sexual content

Teenagers

The New York Times confirmed that they’ve cut ties with a freelance writer who stands accused of using AI to generate his book review. Alex Preston said he’s “hugely embarrassed” by the whole debacle.
The legacy paper was alerted by a reader who noticed that Alex Preston&#8217;s review of “Watching Over Her” by Jean-Baptiste Andrea was suspiciously similar to the review of the same title that Christobel Kent wrote for The Guardian last August.
When confronted by the Times, Preston admitted to using AI for assistance in writing his review and said he did not realize it had lifted copycat lines from anywhere else.
The New York Times sent a note to The Guardian, saying, “[Preston’s] reliance on AI and his use of unattributed work by another writer are a clear violation of the Times’s standards.”
“I made a serious mistake in using an AI tool on a draft review I had written, and I failed to identify and remove overlapping language from another review that the AI dropped in,” Preston said in his statement to the Guardian, as the outlet <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/mar/31/the-new-york-times-drops-freelance-journalist-who-used-ai-to-write-book-review">noted</a>. “I am hugely embarrassed by what happened and truly sorry. I took responsibility immediately and apologized to the New York Times, and I also want to apologize to Christobel Kent and to the Guardian.”
The phrase “lazy Machiavellian Stefano” from The Guardian version became “lazy, Machiavellian Stefano” in the New York Times version.
The Guardian described the book as “most significantly a song of love to a country of contradictions, battered, war-torn, divided, misguided and miraculous: an Italy where life is costume and the performance of art, and where circuses spring up on wasteland.”
This is very similar to the Times version, which said the characters “populate what is ultimately a love song to a country of contradictions: battered, divided, misguided, and miraculous. This is an Italy where life is performance, where circuses rise on wasteland.”
The outlet noted that Preston has written for The Observer, The Financial Times, The Guardian, and The Economist. He’s also written six books, including the recent release, “A Stranger in Corfu.”
This isn’t the first time a legacy newspaper outlet got caught publishing AI-generated content, as The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/chicago-sun-times-published-a-i-generated-summer-reading-list-with-books-that-dont-exist">reported</a>. The Chicago Sun-Times was called out last year for advertising an AI-generated summer reading list, including a number of titles that didn’t actually exist.
Only five of the fifteen suggested titles were real books. The writer, who was not a full-time staff member, apologized for his “huge mistake” and said he “betrayed that trust.”
The paper also issued a response to subscribers, noting that the person responsible for the error had been terminated and promising the mistake would not happen again. 
“We are in a moment of great transformation in journalism and technology, and at the same time our industry continues to be besieged by business challenges. This should be a learning moment for all journalism organizations: Our work is valued — and valuable — because of the humanity behind it,” the statement said.
“At Chicago Public Media, we are proud of our credible, independent journalism, created for and by people. And part of the journalistic process is a commitment to acknowledging mistakes. It is unacceptable that this content was inaccurate, and it is equally unacceptable that we did not make it clear to readers that the section was produced outside the Sun-Times newsroom.”

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