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Trade Paperback
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9780393351897
Overview
Overview
We know it simply as "the pill," yet its genesis was anything but simple. Jonathan Eig's masterful narrative revolves around four principal characters: the fiery feminist Margaret Sanger, who was a champion of birth control in her campaign for the rights of women but neglected her own children in pursuit of free love; the beautiful Katharine McCormick, who owed her fortune to her wealthy husband, the son of the founder of International Harvester and a schizophrenic; the visionary scientist Gregory Pincus, who was dismissed by Harvard in the 1930s as a result of his experimentation with in vitro fertilization but who, after he was approached by Sanger and McCormick, grew obsessed with the idea of inventing a drug that could stop ovulation; and the telegenic John Rock, a Catholic doctor from Boston who battled his own church to become an enormously effective advocate in the effort to win public approval for the drug that would be marketed by Searle as Enovid.
Spanning the years from Sanger's heady Greenwich Village days in the early twentieth century to trial tests in Puerto Rico in the 1950s to the cusp of the sexual revolution in the 1960s, this is a grand story of radical feminist politics, scientific ingenuity, establishment opposition, and, ultimately, a sea change in social attitudes. Brilliantly researched and briskly written, The Birth of the Pill is gripping social, cultural, and scientific history.
- Format: TradePaperback
- Author: Eig, Jonathan
- ISBN: 9780393351897
- Condition: Used
- Dimensions: 8.20 x 1.10
- Number Of Pages: 416
- Publication Year: 2015
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The best non-fiction book I have read this year.
Stephanie O. - 6 years 7 months agoThe Birth of the Pill is a fascinating read that chronicles the journey of four women's health advocates and their quest to invent a safe, effective, and convenient form of birth control. This book is an easy to read history of the ideas, trials, successes, and failures that these individuals faced while trying to invent and widely distribute the birth control pill. The narrative format makes it a quick and enjoyable read without overburdening and boring the reader with names and dates. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in women's health, and societal change incited by scientific advancement.
HPB Staff Review