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Reproductive Health : Selected Books

Books

All books listed are available on the UW-Madison campus or other UW system campus libraries and can be requested to Madison.

EncycBook cover of Encyclopedia of Birth Controllopedia of Birth Control
Vern L. Bullough, editor
"In this comprehensive reference, readers can explore the history of birth control from a variety of perspectives: anthropological, biological, economic, feminist, medical, political, and psychological. From wet nurses to chastity belts, from animal-dung contraceptives to the Dalkon Shield, readers will learn how women have attempted birth control, contraception, and abortion throughout history and throughout the world. Readers will also discover why opposition to birth control was so fierce early in the 20th century that many American women and men were jailed for disseminating information on avoiding pregnancy, and why family planning remains hotly controversial almost a century later.."—Goodreads.com
Book cover for ContraceptionContraception: A Concise History
Donna J Drucker
"In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Donna Drucker traces the history of modern contraception, outlining the development, manufacturing, and use of contraceptive methods from the opening of Dr. Jacobs's clinic to the present. Drucker approaches the subject from the perspective of reproductive justice: the right to have a child, the right not to have a child, and the right to parent children safely and healthily."—Goodreads.com
Book cover for the Birth of the PillThe Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution
Jonathan Eig
"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."—Goodreads.com
Book cover for Contraception, a HistoryContraception: A History
Robert Jütte
"Birth control is not an invention of modern times, nor is it a purely personal matter. By the same token, mighty institutions such as church and state have exerted their influence as effectively as that of doctors, population theorists, and the early pioneers of the feminist movement; all of these claim a special expertise in matters of ethics and morality, and so shape the discourse on birth control. The focal point of this engaging new book by renowned historian, Robert Jütte, is the Europe of modern times. It also takes in its scope various cultural groups elsewhere in America, China, India and the near East, and world religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam, offering an engaging comparative study of the phenomenon of contraception.."—Goodreads.com

Book cover for The Morning After: A History of Emergency Contraception in the United States The Morning After: A History of Emergency Contraception in the United States
Heather Munro Prescott
"The Morning After tells the story of emergency contraception in America from the 1960s to the present day and, more importantly, it tells the story of the women who have used it. Side-stepping simplistic readings of these women as either radical feminist trailblazers or guinea pigs for the pharmaceutical industry, medical historian Heather Munro Prescott offers a portrait of how ordinary women participated in the development and popularization of emergency contraception, bringing a groundbreaking technology into the mainstream with the potential to alter radically reproductive health practices."—Goodreads.com