Pornography was big business in the early 1970s. Smut peddlers — from bookstore owners to theater operators to stage-show managers —were making a killing. Annual sales of "dirty paperbacks" had topped S200 million, and receipts from hard-core movies were estimated at $800 million per year. But outraged Americans began fighting back, mounting an antiobscenity backlash that reached the heights of the Supreme Court. A 1971 postal obscenity law had curbed somewhat the use of the mails to deliver and transport pornography, but apparently it had not been enough. In Washington, D.C., police raided a warehouse containing thousands of pornographic books. Authorities shut down a sex bookstore in Georgia, and other similar stores were picketed and protested in Florida and North Carolina. The Nebraska legislature considered a bill that would close any establishment convicted twice of dealing in pornography. Meanwhile, federal grand juries...