Print the Cartoons

I'm sorry, but if Yale University Press (where, full disclosure, I worked for two years while in college) is going to publish a book about the Muhammad cartoons controversy, it is ludicrous not to publish the actual cartoons. The fact that the cartoons are freely available on the Internet" in the words of John Donatich, the Press's director, is immaterial: they ought to appear alongside the text. And the contention that the images "can be accurately described in words" is absurd: descriptions are always interpretive, and readers absolutely need to be able to see the images for themselves in part so they can judge the author's words. The further decision to strip all images of the Prophet from the book, ranging from Doré to Dalí is pure cowardice. Either don't publish a book you're clearly afraid of publishing, or produce a volume that actually provides readers with what they need to understand the issue. This seems like a real loss for the author, for the Press, and for the reading public.