Condom Nation: The U.S. Government's Sex Education Campaign from World War I to the Internet

Alexandra M. Lord. Condom Nation: The U.S. Government's Sex Education Campaign from World War I to the Internet. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. xiii + 224 pp. $40.00 (ISBN-10: 0-8018-9380-1, ISBN-13: 978-0-8018-9380-3).

Condom Nation tracks almost one hundred years of Public Health Service (PHS) efforts to teach Americans about sex. Alexandra Lord, a former historian with the PHS, takes up the story in the early years of the twentieth century, when the PHS-along with private organizations such as the YMCA and the American Social Hygiene Association- launched its fight against sexually transmitted diseases. Most of the book focuses on these myriad interventions against sexually transmitted infections, while later sections also examine teen pregnancy and sex education in the schools. The book concludes with discussion of controversies over recent surgeons general and reflections on the ongoing state of conflict over...