The Olympia Press published numerous books that defied censorship laws. Written by an Olympia book-smuggler turned bibliographer, The Paris Olympia Press provides an excellent account of the Press, its books and its authors, and includes a full bibliography, an overview of censorship laws and a foreword by the late Maurice Girodias, Olympia Press's founder.

The story of the Olympia Press is one of the most flamboyant in publishing history. In the 1950s, when dirty books (and great ones) were being banned in Britain and America, Maurice Girodias launched a career in Paris that earned him the nickname the "Prince of Porn". John de St. Jorre gives a high-spirited account of this infamous publisher whose eclectic list included Lolita, The Ginger Man, Henry Miller's several Tropics, and the outrageous romp called Candy. Photos.

White Thighs is the amorous tale of Saul, a young European striving to succeed in America, as his erotic explorations transport him from the jaded complacency of the Old World to the heated wilds of New England; from a young boy of raw and ripening passions to a man whose lust for life drives him to wizened betrayals. As Saul submits to the role-playing episodes of his brilliantly cruel house cook Kirstin, his plan to reclaim his darkly beautiful childhood governess Anna against the advice of a meddling old lawyer begins to sink under the weight of his craving for a more profound expression of control. Saul's maddening love of dominance leads to a denoument that is as satisfying as it is surprising.

In Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs revealed his genius. In The Soft Machine he begins an adventure that will take us even further into the dark recesses of his imagination, a region where nothing is sacred, nothing taboo. Continuing his ferocious verbal assault on hatred, hype, poverty, war, bureaucracy, and addiction in all its forms, Burroughs gives us a surreal space odyssey through the wounded galaxies in a book only he could create.

Eunice Lipton was a fledging art historian when she first became intrigued by Victorine Meurent, the nineteenth-century model who appeared in Edouard Manet's most famous paintings, only to vanish from history in a haze of degrading hearsay. But had this bold and spirited beauty really descended into prostitution, drunkenness, and early death—or did her life, hidden from history, take a different course altogether? Eunice Lipton's search for the answer combines the suspense of a detective story with the revelatory power of art, peeling off layers of lies to reveal startling truths about Victorine Meurent—and about Lipton herself.

In a delightfully different account of art and politics during the Second Empire, Friedrich sketches a landscape that encompasses Napoleon III, Flaubert, Wagner, Proust, Degas, Zola, Monet, Hugo, Manet, and many others, both famous and infamous. Photographs.