By DIXIE REID - McClatchy Newspapers SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- "Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath'" by Rick Wartzman; Public Affairs Books ($26.95) SACRAMENTO, Calif. - In August 1939, "The Grapes of Wrath" was the most popular book in America, and quickly becoming the most beleaguered. The Kansas City library banned it, the San Francisco library relegated it to "closed shelves," and members of the East St. Louis, Ill., library board burned three copies. For a time, John Steinbeck's epic Dust Bowl saga was prohibited from traveling through the U.S. mail. Then the Kern County (Calif.) Board of Supervisors voted to remove it from Bakersfield's schools and public libraries. Stanley Abel, active in the local Ku Klux Klan, presented a resolution to his fellow supervisors that said...
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