<i>Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius</i> By Edward de Grazia

Such a headline from the 1990s reminds American readers that, however shameful may have been the treatment of obscenity and pornography in the United States during the past one hundred years, things could have been worse. Even so, the record here is hardly a source of pride-nor does the story have an altogether happy ending, if it has one at all. Yet it is a story that badly needs to be told, and never has it been better told than by Edward de Grazia in Girls Lean Back Everywhere.