We kw 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 ermously effective advocate in the effort to win public approval for the drug that would be marketed by Searle as Evid. 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.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Ww Norton & Co
ISBN-10
0393073726
ISBN-13
9780393073720
eBay Product ID (ePID)
208905321
Product Key Features
Author
Jonathan Eig
Format
Hardback
Language
English
Subject
Popular Science
Type
Textbook
Dimensions
Weight
730g
Height
244mm
Width
165mm
Additional Product Features
Date of Publication
21/10/2014
Place of Publication
New York
Spine
33mm
Content Note
8 Pages of Illustrations
Author Biography
Jonathan Eig, a former reporter at the Wall Street Journal, is the best-selling author of The Birth of the Pill, Luckiest Man, Opening Day, and Get Capone. He lives in Chicago with his wife and children.