NewSouth Books surely considers it a kind of higher wisdom to present America with a version of "Huckleberry Finn" in which the N-word is replaced by "slave." The gesture is, in fact, antique.

Here is a body of modern, educated people bowing to taboos in as visceral a way as the Victorians, who taught us to say white meat and dark meat to avoid specifying anything about breasts and thighs. Cleansing Mark Twain's masterpiece of the N-word follows directly in this tradition, under which today's most powerful taboos are about...