Maria Konnikova finds that all digital traces of Jonah Lehrer's suspended book have been scrubbed:
All of a sudden, Imagine did not exist—at least, as far as major online retailers were concerned. Search for it on Amazon, and you get the following message: "Looking for something? We're sorry. The Web address you entered is not a functioning page on our site." Try Barnes & Noble, no better luck. … A further search of [Houghton Mifflin Harcourt]'s site yields no record of Imagine's ever having existed: If you look for its ISBN or visit Lehrer's bibliography, it's like he never wrote it at all.
Why it matters:
An e-book is not a physical book. That point might seem trite until you stop for a moment to think how much simpler it is, in a certain sense, to destroy electronic than physical traces. There's no need of inciting mass cooperation in book-burning enterprises. No need for secret police or raids or extensive surveillance. The power to remove a book from a device, to remove all traces of it from retailers' websites, to expunge it from a publisher's online record: It would simplify the work of a would-be Soviet Union or Oceania multifold, would it not?
The Dish 