Birth Control and American Modernity

Rezensionen / Stimmen

'MacNamara engages meaningfully with scholarship about birth control and demography outside of the United States, and animates this intellectual history with people, stories, and places that we don't normally associate with the history of ideas or with the history of birth control.' Karissa Haugeberg, Tulane University, New Orleans 'MacNamara has tackled a difficult topic - unpacking public opinion on a topic that wasn't much discussed in public, and he has skillfully found evidence in a wide variety of sources.' Cathy Moran Hajo, Ramapo College, New Jersey 'MacNamara's book goes against the grain of the usual scholarship on the history of birth control: it de-privileges the surface noise - of women's rights activists, vocal eugenicists or Darwinists, of intellectuals in general - to plumb the half-conscious thoughts of ordinary citizens ... MacNamara could hardly have tackled a more contentious subject, but he does so with detached aplomb ... Ever so politely, he is attacking several sacred cows of the traditional feminist scholarship.' Michele Pridmore-Brown, The Times Literary Supplement 'In his novel approach to examining birth control, MacNamara is quite successful in his attempts to bridge the gap between demographic and narrative histories of the topic. He focuses on why Americans chose to adopt methods to control fertility during the first half of the 20th century but also includes considerable information regarding the history of humans' attempts to prevent pregnancy, dating from antiquity to the present ... The book also contains an appendix with detailed information and a bibliography that should be useful to scholars ... Recommended.' J. M. Benowitz, Choice