Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Novelist Sohn (The Actress) delivers an engrossing account of U.S. post office special agent Anthony Comstock's anti-vice crusade and the women who opposed it. The secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, Comstock lobbied Congress to pass the 1873 Comstock Act, which outlawed the distribution, advertisement, possession, or mailing of "obscene material," including contraception and sexual health information. Sohn documents how Comstock used "deceptive tactics," such as sending decoy letters to solicit pamphlets and books through the mail and making disguised visits to physicians' offices, to bully the era's "sex radicals," including abortionist Madame Restell; free-love advocate Victoria Woodhull and her sister, Tennessee Claflin; and homeopath Sarah Chase, who sold spermicidal syringes and countersued Comstock for false arrest. Noting the widespread popularity of publications by these and other women, Sohn links their work to rising demands for free speech, gender equality, and a better quality of life for women, and portrays Comstock and his supporters as desperately clinging to an outdated, prudish misogyny. Blending colorful details of life at the turn of the 20th century with sharp insights into just how revolutionary these new ideas were, this fascinating history deserves a wide readership. (July)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Award-winning Stanford professor Daughton's In The Forest of No Joy covers new territory in the brutal history of colonialism by chronicling the construction of the Congo-Océan railroad across the Republic of Congo. In New Women in the Old West, Gallagher (How the Post Office Created America) portrays the settling of the American West from the women's perspective, including the stories of Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American women. Former Wall Street Journal staffer Hagedorn's Sleeper Agent is George Koval, born in America and taken back to the Soviet Union by his idealistic Russian Jewish parents in the 1930s; he returned later after being recruited by the Red army and became the only Soviet military spy with security clearances for the Manhattan project (40,000-copy first printing). In Checkmate in Berlin, best-selling author Milton (Soldier, Sailor, Frogman, Spy, Airman, Gangster, Kill or Die) chronicles the Allies' post-World War II division of Germany and especially Berlin and the tensions that resulted (40,000-copy first printing). A New York Times best-selling novelist, Sohn turns to nonfiction with The Man Who Hated Women, an account of anti-vice activist and U.S. Postal Inspector Anthony Comstock and the restrictive Comstock Law. In The Verge, Wyman, whose Tides of History podcast boasts 600,000 subscribers, looks at the crucial impact of Europe's Reformation/Renaissance era (50,000-copy first printing).
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
How the reactionary Christian ideology of one government official contributed to the suppression of women's reproductive freedom for decades. In this important work of biographical history, novelist Sohn traces the career of Anthony Comstock (1844-1915), special agent to the U.S. Post Office and secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. For more than 40 years, Comstock, a deeply Christian dry goods seller from Connecticut, harassed and imprisoned many of the important pioneers in the birth control movement. "He became convinced that obscenity, which he called a 'hydra-headed monster,' led to prostitution, illness, death, abortions, and venereal disease," writes the author. In 1873, with the aid of well-heeled YMCA leaders, he was able to pass the Comstock Act, which "made the distribution, selling, possession, and mailing of obscene material and contraception punishable with extreme fines and prison sentences." Wielding this law, he doggedly pursued freethinking, activist women and their supporters as they attempted to speak and write about women's bodies, sexual matters, and abortion. These activists included the sisters Victoria C. Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin, stockbrokers, spiritualists, and "free lovers"; Angela and Ezra Heywood, printers and writers; abortionist Ann "Madam Restell" Lohman, who committed suicide rather than be prosecuted; Dr. Sara B. Chase, who, in defiance, named her popular birth control device the "Comstock Syringe"; Ida Craddock, a spiritual consultant and writer on happy marital sex, who also killed herself when prosecuted; Emma Goldman, anarchist and birth control activist; and Margaret Sanger, who took on Comstock in court and prevailed in starting the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn. Throughout this immensely readable history, Sohn fashions sympathetic narratives of these women's lives and underscores their invaluable sacrifices for a vital cause. Many readers will be appalled to learn that literature about birth control was once considered obscene. Stellar research in women's history, especially crucial due to recent threats to abortion rights across the country. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.