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Elaine Tyler May. America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation. New York: Basic Books, 2010. vii + 214 pp. $29.95 (978-0-465-01152-0).
In May 2010, the birth control pill reached its fiftieth birthday. The semicentennial of the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the first oral contraceptive was marked by extensive reporting in newspapers and magazines and on television, radio, and the Internet. Time magazine featured the pill on its cover, Harry Smith hosted Gloria Steinem in a panel discussion on CBS's The Early Show, and Basic Books released Elaine Tyler May's new book, America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation. May is of course well known as one of the foremost research scholars in American studies and women's history, with several books to her credit on women, families, and reproduction in the twentieth century.
America and the Pill seems to be intended for a more general audience. The book relies heavily on Lara Marks's Sexual Chemistry: A History of the Contraceptive Pill, Margaret Marsh and Wanda Ronner's The Fertility Doctor:...