In late 1919, Margaret Sanger, founder of what would become Planned Parenthood, mailed out something familiar to anybody who’s worked in the non-profit world: an end of the year fundraising appeal. But whether Sanger knew it or not, records released by the National Archives show that on the receiving end of one of those letters were agents from the FBI’s predecessor trying to bust her for distributing obscene material.

Terry Southern’s career is the stuff of Hollywood legend, but the celebrated satirist is perhaps best known for his work as the principle screenwriter for Dr. Strangelove. While that film appeared to have raised a few eyebrows at the Bureau, it was a different kind of strange love that finally earned Southern the FBI’s attention - files released to Shawn Musgrave show the DOJ’s finest legal minds grappling with the question of whether his satirical pornographic novel Candy was pornography or satire.

The FBI file on avant-garde book publisher Barney Rosset reveals how J. Edgar Hoover’s Bureau played decency crusader on two continents in an attempt to keep Lady Chatterley’s Lover out of the hands of the public.