The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution
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.
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A tale of scientific progress and social change as engaging and gripping as any suspense novel.--Molly Langmuir
The pill is utterly ordinary today. The story of how we got here is anything but.--Hannah Levintova
Who knew that the history of oral contraceptives could rival a good procedural drama, with a scrappy group of believers racing against time?--Meredith Counts
An impassioned cultural history.--Laura Pearson
Eig's nimbly paced cultural history shows that the pill's genesis was anything but simple.
Suspense-filled and beautifully written...an irresistible tale.--Ken Burns
Fascinating... Weaving medical, corporate, and political history with rich biographical detail, Eig turns the history of the pill into a scientific suspense story full of profoundly human characters. The result is cultural history at its finest.--Alan W. Petrucelli
A fascinating look into the evolution of medical practices, funding and ethics [and] an intricate portrait of how completely women's reproductive lives are woven into our culture in disturbing and contradictory ways.--Ashley Nelson
Masterful... when legislatures and courts threaten to negate the miracles of science and human progress so dazzlingly portrayed here, Eig's book is essential reading.--Kate Manning
Eig's research is thorough and his account exhaustive.--Emily Witt
Narrative nonfiction at its best... A fascinating and thorough look at one of the most important innovations of the 20th century.
Eig's stylish storytelling makes this a fresh, infectiously readable take.--Kate Tuttle
Absorbing... One of the book's great strengths--accomplished through his smart choice of lead characters--is the depiction of how arduous it is to make real social change.--Margaret Talbot
Aside from being a fascinating look into the evolution of medical practices, funding and ethics, Eig's book is an intricate portrait of how completely women's lives are weaved into our culture in disturbing and contradictory ways.
Detailed, compelling history... Eig does a remarkable job of keeping the science and the storytelling in harmony.--Josh Modell
