The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution
- ISBN-10
- 0393245942
- ISBN-13
- 9780393245943
- Category
- Science
- Pages
- 416
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2014-10-13
- Publisher
- W. W. Norton & Company
- Author
- Jonathan Eig
Description
A Chicago Tribune "Best Books of 2014" • A Slate "Best Books 2014: Staff Picks" • A St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Best Books of 2014" The fascinating story of one of the most important scientific discoveries of the twentieth century. 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.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2016-02-09
- 400 pages
- Paperback
- Pan Macmillan
-
- 2014-10-23
- 400 pages
- Paperback
- Pan Macmillan
Similar books
-
This Is Your Brain on Birth Control: The Surprising Science of Women, Hormones, and the Law of Unintended Consequences
By Sarah HillThis book will help women make more informed decisions about their health, whether they're on the pill or off of it.
-
America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation
By Elaine Tyler MayBut as renowned historian Elaine Tyler May reveals inAmerica and the Pill, it was women who embraced it and created change. They used the pill to challenge the authority of doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and lawmakers.
-
Just Get on the Pill: The Uneven Burden of Reproductive Politics
By Krystale E. LittlejohnIn Just Get on the Pill, Littlejohn draws on interviews to show how young women come to take responsibility for prescription birth control as the "woman's method" and relinquish control of external condoms as the "man's method.
-
Summary of Jonathan Eig's The Birth of the Pill
By , Everest MediaPlease note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
-
Sweetening the Pill: or How We Got Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control
By Holy Grigg-SpallHowever, there are a growing number of women looking for non-hormonal alternatives for preventing pregnancy. In a bid to spark the backlash against hormonal contraceptives, this book asks: Why can't we criticize the Pill?
-
Beyond the Pill: A 30-Day Program to Balance Your Hormones, Reclaim Your Body, and Reverse the Dangerous Side Effects of...
By Jolene BrightenJolene Brighten, ND, author of the groundbreaking new book BEYOND THE PILL, specializes in treating women’s hormone imbalances caused by the pill and shares her proven 30-day program designed to reverse the myriad of symptoms women ...
-
The Doctor's Case Against the Pill
By Barbara SeamanA reassessment of a thought-provoking work raises questions about the safety and reliability of birth control pills in the light of such modern technologies as hormone replacement therapy and Norplant implants. Reprint. Tour. IP.
-
Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America
By Ellen CheslerThe arcadian retreat, a sixteenth century house of stone surrounded by orchards and gardens, had once belonged to the father of Britain's celebrated romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The liberated de Selincourts were committed to ...
-
Breast Cancer: Its Link to Abortion and the Birth Control Pill
By Chris KahlenbornBreast Cancer: Its Link to Abortion and the Birth Control Pill
-
Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance
By John M. RiddleJ. Lawrence Angel , an American pathologist , and Mirko D. Grmek , a French physician - historian , are major pioneers and contributors to the field in discovering the data by developing techniques for examination and assessing the ...