Overwhelming and at times wearying, but nonetheless an instructive look at previous battles over knowledge and suppression...
Extremely detailed study of how 19th-century Americans imagined sex and the resulting court battles over obscenity.
The period, writes Horowitz (American Studies/Smith; The Power and Passion of M. Carey Thomas, 1994), was “engaged in a complex four-way conversation about sex.” The first of the “four primary voices” she discerns was traditional bawdy humor, passed down through generations mostly in oral form but including such books as Fanny Hill. These frank works soon became targets of evangelical Christians, the second partner in this conversation. The third, and the one given the most space by Horowitz, is the “voice” of reform physiology, which here includes everything from the first medical books on birth control to the European notion that masturbation caused insanity. (The author also throws in a brief mention of John Humphrey Noyes’s utopian colony in Oneida, New York, and a quick survey of prescriptive literature.) Woven into this third section is the emerging world of an urban male “sporting” culture devoted to the pursuit of pleasure without thought of obligations or consequences; this culture gave rise to weekly newspapers that contained frank material about sexual matters. It is here that Horowitz turns to a study of the press, libel, and obscenity, noting that in addition to delivering erotic material, the weeklies possibly extorted money from their readership, for example by threatening to reveal the names of those who visited brothels. The final voice in this conversation comes from reformers promoting sexual liberty and adherents of free speech. The magnitude of Horowitz’s aims sometimes makes for a daunting read: a discussion of the Comstock Law requires an extensive review of the origins of the Y.M.C.A.; the history of an 1873 statute suppressing obscene literature dictates a lengthy portrait of free-love advocate Victoria Woodhull.
Overwhelming and at times wearying, but nonetheless an instructive look at previous battles over knowledge and suppression in a culture that remains “profoundly divided over questions of morality and its relation to government.” (86 illustrations)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-40192-X
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
A sleek, vital history that effectively shows how, “from the outset, inequality was enforced with the whip, the gun, and the...
A concise, alternate history of the United States “about how people across the hemisphere wove together antislavery, anticolonial, pro-freedom, and pro-working-class movements against tremendous obstacles.”
In the latest in the publisher’s ReVisioning American History series, Ortiz (History/Univ. of Florida; Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920, 2005, etc.) examines U.S. history through the lens of African-American and Latinx activists. Much of the American history taught in schools is limited to white America, leaving out the impact of non-European immigrants and indigenous peoples. The author corrects that error in a thorough look at the debt of gratitude we owe to the Haitian Revolution, the Mexican War of Independence, and the Cuban War of Independence, all struggles that helped lead to social democracy. Ortiz shows the history of the workers for what it really was: a fatal intertwining of slavery, racial capitalism, and imperialism. He states that the American Revolution began as a war of independence and became a war to preserve slavery. Thus, slavery is the foundation of American prosperity. With the end of slavery, imperialist America exported segregation laws and labor discrimination abroad. As we moved into Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, we stole their land for American corporations and used the Army to enforce draconian labor laws. This continued in the South and in California. The rise of agriculture could not have succeeded without cheap labor. Mexican workers were often preferred because, if they demanded rights, they could just be deported. Convict labor worked even better. The author points out the only way success has been gained is by organizing; a great example was the “Day without Immigrants” in 2006. Of course, as Ortiz rightly notes, much more work is necessary, especially since Jim Crow and Juan Crow are resurging as each political gain is met with “legal” countermeasures.
A sleek, vital history that effectively shows how, “from the outset, inequality was enforced with the whip, the gun, and the United States Constitution.”Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8070-1310-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
Gioia, musician and critic, winner of the ASCAPDeems Taylor Award for The Imperfect Art (not reviewed) takes on a daunting task, tracing the history of jazz from preCivil War New Orleans to the embattled music of today—and does a creditable job of it. Jazz's history has been written by entirely too many mythographers and polemicists. Gioia, mercifully, spares us the myths and polemics. ``The Africanization of American music,'' as he calls it, begins farther back in American history than New Orleans's aptly named Storyville red-light district around the turn of the century; he starts his narrative in the slave market of the city's Congo Square in 1819, and when it comes to Storyville, he offers hard facts to puncture the picturesque racism that finds jazz's roots in the whorehouses of New Orleans. Indeed, one of the great strengths of Gioia's account is the sociohistorical insights it offers, albeit occasionally as throwaway sidelights, such as his observation about drumming as an avatar of regimentation more than of freedom. He is particularly good in explaining how the music was disseminated and shaped by new technologies—the player piano, the phonograph, radio. He is also excellent at drawing a portrait of a musician's style in short brushstrokes. His prose is for the most part fluid and even graceful (although his metaphors do get a bit strained at times, as in his comparison of Don Redman's ``jagged, pointillistic'' arrangement of ``The Whiteman Stomp'' and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle). Although Gioia is much too generous to jazz-rock fusion of the '70s and '80s and probably gives more space than necessary to white dance bands like the Casa Loma orchestra, if you wanted to introduce someone to jazz with a single book, this would be a good choice. (9 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-19-509081-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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