Obscenity and the Law  

"Like the proliferation of highly publicized obscenity trials, that of books about obscenity was principally an American phenomenon. Germany and France produced little on the subject, and Britain not much more, though the very best books of the kind were published in England. Among them should be mentioned Norman St. John-Stevas's Obscenity and the Law (1956), Alec Craig's The Banned Books of England and Other Countries (1962), H. Montgomery Hyde's A History of Pornography (1964), and Donald Thomas's A Long Time Burning (1969). The superiority of these books derives in part from their sociohistorical approach; American studies tended to get bogged down in court proceedings and to read like law textbooks." --The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture, p. 287, Walter Kendrick