Amy Werbel's New Book on Anthony Comstock and Censorship in the Gilded and Progressive Periods; "Lust on Trial" @awerbel @LustonTrial @ColumbiaUP

Amy Werbel, Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, is publishing Lust on Trial:Censorship and the Rise of American Obsenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock (Columbia University Press).  Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

Lust on Trial offers a new and unadulterated view of the risqué behaviors and complex sexualities of Americans in the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras, and a fresh perspective on legal efforts to expand civil liberties before World War I. Extensive new research conducted in dozens of public and private archives makes it possible for the first time to fully tell the story of Anthony Comstock’s censorship of American visual culture, and to publish examples of the “obscenities” he suppressed. Lust on Trial illuminates the complex relationship between censorship and cultural change, and offers thought-provoking insight to our nation’s long struggle to live up to the promise of the First Amendment.