Taming Lust: Crimes Against Nature in the Early Republic (Early American Studies)
"Taming Lustperforms a remarkable double feat of historical reconstruction. On the one hand, it uncovers the tangled roots of a pair of highly anomalous trials for bestiality in late eighteenth-century New England. On the other, it unfolds a broad panorama of the social, political, and sexual culture of an entire era. These paired objectives inform a writing that is strongly constructed, elegantly expressed, and larded with fascinating detail."—John Demos, author ofThe Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic"Strange sexual perversities can provide a window into basic values of ordinary people at a particular time and place.Taming Lustdoes just that, offering a perceptive peek at New England near the end of the eighteenth century, and doing so in prose that almost sings."—Joseph J. Ellis, author ofRevolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence"Impeccably researched, vividly narrated, and persuasively argued,Taming Lustopens up a compelling prospect of a society in crisis, at once attracted and repelled by the seductions of a modern, cosmopolitan world fast advancing all over the new American republic. The conflict between old and new ways briefly erupted in the two fascinating cases at the heart of this immensely readable book, when judicial authorities took the rare step of prosecuting ancient men on the margins of their communities for a capital offense that had not occupied the courts since the last days of Puritan rule. As Ben-Atar and Brown show us, the true mystery of these episodes lies not in the alleged behavior of two elderly men but in the decisions by public officials to haul them into court and seek their deaths on the gallows."—Robert A. Gross, author ofThe Minutemen and Their World