Reviews/Media
Gold Prize for books related to U.S. history – 2022 Independent Publisher’s Book Awards
Featured in honor of Banned Books Week – Stanford University Press Blog
Featured in First Amendment News 307: Summer list of 30 new or forthcoming books on free expression – FIRE (Foundation For Individual Rights In Education)
“Dirty Works fills a crucial gap in the history of obscenity law…It is meticulously well-researched…incredibly thorough…and anyone working on this period in obscenity law will want to consult its pages.”
Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books at Rutgers, March 2022 (link to full review below)
As Brett Gary writes, in the forthcoming book “Dirty Works: Obscenity on Trial in America’s First Sexual Revolution,” “women’s reproductive autonomy” persists as “a perpetual source of political controversy and site of conservative political mobilization in part because the patriarchal dimensions of Comstockery remain steadfast in the culture.”
The New Yorker, July 2021
An important book about a neglected figure in the fight for reproductive rights and freedom of expression.
Kirkus Reviews, June 2021
Readers will appreciate the thoroughness and accessibility of this deeply researched account.
Publisher’s Weekly, May 2021
A rich account of 1920s to 1950s New York City, starring an eclectic mix of icons like James Joyce, Margaret Sanger, and Alfred Kinsey―all led by an unsung hero of free expression and reproductive rights: Morris L. Ernst.
First Amendment News, “Forthcoming Books,” December, 2020
Readers interested in 20th-century U.S. history, civil liberties litigation, Ernst and his legal colleagues, birth control, or the cultural basis of obscenity laws will find this book worthwhile.
Library Journal, August 2021