| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Pursuing Johns: Criminal Law Reform, Defending Character, and New York City's Committee of Fourteen, 1920–1930. By Thomas C. Mackey. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005. x, 297 pp. $63.95, ISBN 0-8142-0988-2.)

This is a microstudy that takes on some big issues. Thomas C. Mackey's gaze is on a failed campaign in the 1920s to punish men who visited prostitutes, but his mind is on concerns prominent in today's conservative movement: the collapse of morality in modern America, the excesses of feminism, and the folly of social engineering. Sympathizing with the reformers' goal of strengthening moral character, Mackey nonetheless warns against "envisioning the criminal law as the primary vehicle for the reform of private morals" (p. 207). He argues that the reformers erred in favoring legal compulsion over public persuasion. Pursuing Johns is thus a cautionary tale for those seeking to reverse the supposed debasement of American culture and for any advocate of social change.

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