Book excerpt: Richard Randall reinterprets pornography both as a part of the human psyche and a public policy issue. He explores the pornographic imagination in art and literature, offers a wide-ranging assessment of major empirical findings on the effects of pornography, and draws on historical and anthropological data to show how social rules and institutions have mirrored the ambivalence we feel toward sexual expression. Freedom and Taboo argues that pornography is likely to be a major, continuing public issue for democratic society.