Moral reform movements claiming to protect children began to emerge in the United States over a century ago, most notably when Anthony Comstock and his supporters crusaded to restrict the circulation of contraceptive devices, information on the sexual rights of women, and "obscene" art and literature. Much of their rhetoric influences debates on issues surrounding children and sexuality today. In a book filled with Victorian accounts of pregnant girls,...

In 1901, as America tallied its gains from a period of unprecedented imperial expansion, an assassin's bullet shattered the nation's confidence. This book is the story of the momentous years leading up to that event, and of the very different paths that brought together two figures of the era: President William McKinley and anarchist Leon Czolgosz. The two men seemed to live in eerily parallel Americas. The United States was undergoing an uneasy transition...