In the 1890s an unlikely pair – a Jewish cigar maker and a widowed single mother – united under a common cause and changed their lives’ trajectories. Together, David Goldstein and Martha Moore Avery entered the ring on some of the most prominent political controversies of their day, at a time when American culture was in a period of rapid change. Women’s suffrage, birth control, Socialism, labor and union issues, and the role of religion in modern society – they had opinions on all of these topics. Nor were they shy about sharing those opinions, from soap boxes on street corners to lecture halls, from Boston to San Francisco. “A Common Cause: The Lives and Work of David Goldstein and Martha Moore Avery" examines the long careers of two former Socialists turned Catholic crusaders