The New York Times Book Review - Cynthia Gorney
…impressively researched…startling, disturbing and terrifically readable. Using McCall's saga as a narrative spine, Stern chronicles the nationwide network of laws and policies targeting prostitutes and any other woman whose alleged sexual activity made her a potential carrier of venereal disease…The Trials of Nina McCall is a consistently surprising page-turner…a brilliant study of the way social anxieties have historically congealed in state control over women's bodies and behavior—at times with the complicity of medical authorities.
From the Publisher
A consistently surprising page-turner . . . a brilliant study of the way social anxieties have historically congealed in state control over women’s bodies and behavior.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“For those of us who decry today’s internationally unparalleled carceral crisis and wonder how we ended up here, Stern’s beautifully written account of the American Plan and the life of Nina McCall offers some need but uncomfortable answers.”
—The New York Review of Books
“A powerful report on a relevant women’s movement deservedly brought to light over a century after it occurred.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“McCall’s story is captivating as pure biography, but it is all the more remarkable documentarily.”
—The Times Literary Supplement
“Meticulously researched, utterly damning . . . The truths revealed in this book are truly shocking, and even more so because they are so little known.”
—The New Republic
“A chilling look at a sadly relevant period in American history. Highly recommended for readers interested in women’s studies and public health.”
—Library Journal
“Stern breaks new ground by offering persuasive evidence of the [American Plan’s] breadth, persistence, impact, and evolution from the World War I era into the 1970s. It’s a shattering story.”
—The Boston Globe
“A piece of historical detective work that unearths a horrifying facet of America’s past.”
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“An engaging, exemplary report on a too-long buried part of America’s gendered and assaultive treatment of women.”
—Sexual Assault Report from the Civil Research Institute
“Before reading this book, I had never heard of either the American Plan or Nina McCall. After reading it, I will be unlikely to forget either. Scott W. Stern has done a remarkably thorough job of laying out the evidence, brick by brick by brick, that damns the systematic incarceration of women with dubious sexual histories as one of the more shameful chapters in our nation’s history.”
—Anne Fadiman, author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
“In this beautiful and most heart-wrenching narrative, Scott Stern renders newly legible a most disturbing chapter in our nation’s long history of stigmatizing and criminalizing its most vulnerable citizens.”
—Heather Ann Thompson, author of Blood in the Water
“Beautifully written, this book will dismay, outrage, and haunt you. Stern paints the horror of the decades-long American Plan, which surveilled and incarcerated thousands of vulnerable young women without due process. This chilling account of American policing run amok chronicles the logic of the incarcerators and recaptures their victims’ voices. It is an exceptionally powerful intervention in our ongoing national conversation on law, order, and punishment.”
—Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History, Yale University
“This deeply researched book tells a profoundly important story, intentionally erased, about America in the twentieth century. Through the eyes of Nina McCall, Stern explores the American Plan, ostensibly implemented to control gonorrhea and syphilis but, in fact, causing the harassment, brutal medical mismanagement, and imprisonment of tens of thousands of women. In our own era, when harassment is a great national topic, this book could not be more timely.”
—Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia and Women Rowing North
“In this time of ‘reckoning’ about sexual assault and harassment, Scott Stern’s book offers a powerful historical reminder of the state’s role in the incarceration of women and girls during World War I and its aftermath. In Stern’s riveting narrative, Nina McCall’s story is both sobering and shocking.”
—Allan M. Brandt, author of No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States Since 1880
Kirkus Reviews
2018-03-19
Historical survey of an early-20th-century initiative to control "promiscuous" women through forced quarantines.In the 1910s, citing venereal disease as one of the largest culprits of military disability, the U.S. government created what was called the American Plan, which resulted in thousands of women being incarcerated for their perceived contraction and transmission of sexually transmitted infections. Stern adapts his prizewinning Yale University graduate thesis on the subject for general readers. The result is a dramatic re-enactment of the plight of these involuntarily quarantined women, personified through the life of Nina McCall, a teenager who was targeted by health officials as a disease carrier (she was declared "slightly infected" with gonorrhea) and coerced into admitting herself into a women's detention hospital. Bolstered by the advent of neoregulationism, whereby health officials—not police—would filter, outlaw, and imprison women for disease and suspected prostitution, officials held the mass-arrested women for months on often sketchy evidence. Eventually, after simmering resentment turned to sheer outrage, a resistance movement began to develop, and dozens of women escaped, rioted, enacted hunger strikes, or set fire to their facilities in protest. According to Stern's meticulous research, others, including McCall, took the legal route and sued government officials for the torturous and barbaric "curative" treatments they had endured in the detention facilities. Using letters, diaries, articles, and archival records, the author intricately re-creates McCall's world and brings much-needed attention to the struggle of these persecuted women and their fight for justice. The author spotlights McCall's trial testimony, where she became a radical voice against female oppression and abuse and an inspiration to others. The book's academic tone is direct, informative, exacting, and well-suited for the grim subject matter it addresses, and it puts a face on the treacherous, sexist injustices committed by a misguided government.A powerful report on a relevant women's movement deservedly brought to light over a century after it occurred.
