On the Pill: A Social History of Oral Contraceptives, 1950-1970

"In 1968, a popular writer ranked the pill's importance with the discovery of fire and the developments of tool—making, hunting, agriculture, urbanism, scientific medicine, and nuclear energy. Twenty—five years later, the leading British weekly, the Economist, listed the pill as one of the seven wonders of the modern world. The image of the oral contraceptive as revolutionary persists in popular culture, yet the nature of the changes it supposedly brought about has not been fully investigat...