| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Lara V. Marks. Sexual Chemistry: A History of the Contraceptive Pill. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2001. Pp. xi, 372. $29.95.

This book represents scholarship of comparative modern history at its finest. Lara V. Marks presents a detailed and judicious account of the development and use of oral contraception in the United States and Europe following World War II. Based on extensive archival research in the United States and England, as well as over fifty interviews with key figures, this book is the most authoritative work to date on the history of oral contraception. 1

Marks shows that the primary impetus for the development of the birth control pill in the post-World War II period was the fear of global overpopulation, but the scientific origins of the pill can be traced to research in the late nineteenth century that led, in 1934, to the discovery of progesterone, an effective suppressant of ovulation. Parallel research beginning at the turn of the century also led to the isolation of estrogen as another ovulation suppressant. Also, in the prewar years, the contraceptive properties of plants were explored by scientists, including flowers used by the Shoshone to prevent pregnancy. A turning point in this research came in the postwar years when Katherine Dexter McCormick, at the recommendation of Margaret Sanger, began supporting the contraceptive research of Gregory Pincus at the Worcester Foundation in Massachusetts in 1952. . . .

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