The Library of Congress purchased the M & S Collection (also known as the M & S American Extremism Collection) from M & S Rare Books of Weston, Massachusetts, in late 1981.

The collection contains periodicals, pamphlets, broadsides, miscellaneous ephemera, and books documenting the activities of American religious, political, and social extremist groups from 1934 to 1981, with the bulk of the material published between 1950 and 1981. Includes material issued by organizations of the radical right on the subjects of anti-Communism, anti-Semitism, anti-socialism, Christian ethics, Fascism, states rights, and White Supremacy. Also includes material distributed by various left-wing organizations during the 1960's and 1970's relating to the antinuclear movement, anti-imperialism, civil rights, gay and women's rights, and the Black Power movement.

These materials chronicle the propagandizing, fund raising, theorizing, and other activities of radical groups. The greatest strength is in materials relating to the American radical right during the twentieth century. The holdings especially document the religious right's involvement with nationalism, anti-communism, anti-humanism, anti-Semitism, and the movement for media decency. Various religious groups such as the Unification Church, Church of Scientology, and the Church of God International are described in part in some of the materials. To the extreme right within the religious movements represented are advocates of Identity theology, with its concurrent anti-Semitism and Holocaust revisionism, anti-Communism, survivalism, and nationalism. Secular anti-Communists and survivalists, neofascists, opponents of fluoridation of the water supply, and those distrustful of the United Nations are all among the groups chronicled.

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information and a finding aid in the Library of Congress Online Catalog