City of Vice

If Paris is the city of love, then London is the city of lust. From the bath houses of Roman Londinium to the sexual underground of the twentieth century and beyond, The Sexual History of London is an entertaining, vibrant chronicle of London and sex through the ages.

The blackout went into effect three days before the declaration of war and transformed nocturnal London into a criminal's paradise. As the city pulled together in the face of terrible adversity, the bomb-ravaged streets became the stalking grounds for killers, rapists, looters and gangs. The number of bodies retrieved during the Blitz made it impossible for the authorities to autopsy them all, providing cover to those who worked with blades, guns and more sinister tools. Scotland Yard – its resources stretched to the limit – did its best to tackle a rogues' gallery born of bombs and blackout, and crimes that continue to fascinate from history's darkest corners.

San Francisco’s Queen of Vice uncovers the story of one of the most skilled, high-priced, and corrupt abortion entrepreneurs in America. Even as Prohibition was the driving force behind organized crime, abortions became the third-largest illegal enterprise as state and federal statutes combined with changing social mores to drive abortionists into hiding.

Anthony Comstock was America’s first professional censor. From 1873 to 1915, as Secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, Comstock led a spirited crusade against lasciviousness, salaciousness, and obscenity that resulted in the confiscation and incineration of more than three million pictures, postcards, and books he personally judged to be obscene. But as Amy Werbel shows in this rich cultural and social history, Comstock’s campaign to rid America of vice in fact led to greater acceptance of the materials he deemed objectionable, offering a cautionary tale about the unintended consequences of censorship.