[Strub] conveys how pornography comes into contact with greater narratives of obscenity, permissiveness, sexuality, and gender. It is apparent from [his] accounts how pornography is a vital and rich subject for analyzing a range of social pressures and competing narratives. H-Histsex Perversion for Profit situates the pornography battles within the tricky ideological crosscurrents of the culture war.
David T. ... Read moreCourtwright Journal of American History Strub does a masterful job of making the complicated postwar legal history of the shifting definitions of obscenity clear in a nuanced analysis that is always attentive to issues of gender and sexuality.
David K. Johnson American Historical Review Well-researched and wide-ranging... [Perversion for Profit] deserves accolades for charting conservatism's ongoing affair with pornography and convincingly demonstrating the centrality of sexuality to an understanding of modern political history.
Gillian Frank Journal of the History of Sexuality Show Less