I know what it feels like to discover that independent thought has a price.

Before I founded Fringe Books, I was a tenured academic. A part of my job description was to teach critical thinking. But when I showed students how to read academic papers, how to find original sources, and how to understand statistics that contradicted the official narrative of the mainstream media, that became a problem.

After a warning, I continued teaching what the evidence showed, and I lost my position, officially “without cause.”

And I wasn’t the only one.

Two friends of mine, philosophy professors at highly regarded US universities, experienced the same thing. Dismissal without cause. Dismissed for teaching critical thinking.

We were free to teach Socrates, but not to practice what he taught.

For me, this wasn’t simply about losing my livelihood. It illustrated how deep the rot had become, and how vulnerable our society was to becoming dysfunctional and totalitarian … if that hasn’t happened already. How can we expect institutions in any domain to act ethically when universities expel those who live by those principles?

Thinking I’d find a new career as a writer, I found a similar pattern in the publishing industry.

Closed doors and censorship. Gatekeepers hostile to anything they deemed potentially “offensive.” Decisions based on market demand—a demand they themselves had nurtured with progressively dumbed-down books, chasing an ever-shrinking market of readers.

Perhaps there’s a reason that market is shrinking? Maybe demand is shrinking because people recognize poor writing the way they recognize today’s vacuous formulaic music. But the industry doesn’t see it that way.

I looked for an alternative.

I couldn’t find one.

So I decided to build one.

A publisher that believes books should enlighten as well as entertain. That writing should strive to be beautiful, challenge us, and leave us thinking about something we didn’t expect to think about.

Fringe Books didn’t wait for permission. And neither should you.