A new PEN America report says bans of nonfiction books in US schools increase sharply during the 2024–2025 academic year. The report, titled “Facts & Fiction: Stories Stripped Away By Book Bans,” analyzes 3,743 unique titles removed from school libraries and classrooms between July 2024 and June 2025. PEN America reports that more than 1,100 of those titles are nonfiction, representing 29% of the total, and it says that this figure is more than double the share and count from the prior year.
Across the outlets’ summaries, the report also highlights that books focused on activism and social movements are among those targeted. The findings are based on PEN America’s compilation of removals and bans, and the outlets describe the analysis as a snapshot of the books taken out of schools and classrooms during the period.
PEN America is not the only source documenting the broader US trend of book restrictions, but these reports converge on the same specific dataset: 3,743 unique titles removed, with nonfiction making up a substantially larger portion than in the previous school year.
