anthony comstock is a great foil. if we can use them, i felt like if i i could use them to tell these stories, why not? because -- >> it would be exactly what he wouldn't want, right? >> exactly, yes, yes. he, too, is an evocative character. >> let's get a little sketch of our he comes from. i want to move into the women's stories. >> of course. >> but who was he? he had this profound impact on the lives of women going forward for 100 years and there's still -- >> 150 really. the passage of the comstock act was 1873 so we are now coming up on -- amite adding correctly? 150 years. anthony comstock was born in 1844 in new canaan connecticut. then an agrarian part of connecticut, grew up on a farm. he could see the long island sound on the farm, and every sunday he and his brothers and sisters and parents went to the congregationalist church for many, many hours. his mother was a direct descendent of the puritans. anthony fought in the civil war. his brother samuel, died in service, and he enlisted afterwards. he appears

like-- she wrote these marriage manuals, but also in revisions of her own book talked about anthony comstock being a sadist saying anyone who thought sex was unclean must be comstock in and so many of them were fighting the comstock laws through writing about them in the radical press and this is sometimes called the freestyle world or freethinker world and what it was was a series-- i was about to say at least a thousand publications from around the 1830s to 1880s, 1890s, the sort of heyday of it who advocated for civil liberties. some of them were health oriented and it had health writing and political writing. huge circulations and their letter writers is sometimes became columnist, which i had this column in the 1990s and some of our best letter writers word just hire them. not me. [laughter] and so what really inspired me was the idea of radical-- and they would sometimes include petitions and circulars and things like that in the publications like radical action through radical publication and it's really fascinating to me. >> and so when you are talking about publications first of all

the anti-vice activist anthony comstock devoted his career to

amy sohn looks at the life of making surges postal inspector anthony comstock and later podcast host ben shapiro argues the progressive left is pushing an authoritarian agenda in america. find more schedule information at booktv.org or consult your program guide. here's mike rothschild. >> i am julia, bookseller with politics and prose. we are live with mike rothsn ben collins discussing "the storm is upon us: how qanon became a movement, cult, and conspiracy theory of everything." you can follow the link posted in the chat to purchase a book directly from us at politics and prose. if you have a question for either of our speakers use the q&a feature found at the bottom of your screen. we will move to questions in the last portion of the discussion so we apologize in advance if the run short on time. additionally we are glad to offer close caption for this event via zoom auto captioning service. to enable captions click the cc live transcript icon at the bottom of your screen. before we start we do want to sincerely thank all of you at the for joining us. we're really thankful to our

the anti-vice activist anthony comstock devoted his career to opposing what he deemed immoral.is namesake law the 1873

amy sohn looks at the life of making surges postal inspector anthony comstock and later podcast host ben shapiro argues the progressive left is pushing an authoritarian agenda in america. find more schedule information at booktv.org or consult your program guide. here's mike rothschild. >> i am julia, bookseller with politics and prose. we are live with mike rothsn ben collins discussing "the storm is upon us: how qanon became a movement, cult, and conspiracy theory of everything." you can follow the link posted in the chat to purchase a book

amy sohn looks at the life of making surges postal inspector anthony comstock and later podcast host ben shapiro argues the progressive left is pushing an authoritarian agenda in america. find more schedule information at booktv.org or consult your program guide. here's mike rothschild. >> i am julia, bookseller with politics and prose. we are live with mike rothsn ben collins discussing "the storm is upon us: how qanon became a movement, cult, and conspiracy theory of everything." you can follow the link posted in the chat to purchase a book directly from us at politics and prose. if you have a question for either of our speakers use the q&a feature found at the bottom of your screen. we will move to questions in the last portion of the discussion so we apologize in advance if the run short on time. additionally we are glad to offer close caption for this event via zoom auto captioning service. to enable captions click the cc live transcript icon at the bottom of your screen. before we start we do want to sincerely thank all of you at the for