In dropping Linda Fairstein, the book industry reveals its cowardice

When Galileo Galilei finished writing his last work, “Two New Sciences,” he had trouble finding a publisher.

Galileo had been branded a heretic, and his work was prohibited by the Inquisition. A patron arranged for the book to be published in Venice and then chickened out. The House of Elzevir (whose name lives on in the modern publisher Elsevier) arranged for the manuscript to be smuggled out of Italy and published in the Netherlands, then as now a stronghold of free thinking.

That defiance could very well have brought a death sentence. But a few publishers once had the grit to stand up to the Inquisition.

In our time, most of them cannot even stand up to Twitter, a measly and miserable inquisition of another kind.

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