Dr. Elizabeth Watkins - On the Pill (1998)
reviews

“ On the Pill is a skillfully conceived, elegantly written, and persuasively argued volume. The strength of this work lies in the author's ability to take familiar accounts and assumptions that organize daily life and subtly but systematically recast them. Watkins successfully reorients rather than disorients readers, leaving us, in the end, with a sharper, more finely textured sense of the constellation of social forces, competing interests, shifting meanings, and effects that together shaped and were shaped by a contraceptive innovation known simply as “the pill.””
-- Valerie Hartouni, Isis

“In every carefully organized, lucidly written chapter Watkins provides surprising corrections to conventional thinking about the new birth control method … Watkins argues that the pill changed the practice of medicine in mid-century America and contributed to Americans' growing ambivalence toward science and medicine.”
-- Janet Farrell Brodie, Journal of American History

“Watkins's volume is trim and well-focused, and the author has a more sophisticated and helpful conversance with science than most historians of related subjects. The sections of the book that deal directly with science, the marketing of scientific breakthroughs, the commercialization of medicine, and the struggle over regulating science-based information are fresh and very interesting.”
-- Rickie Solinger, American Historical Review

“The book is incisive and well documented with sources that should prove useful for anyone interested in the development of the women's health movement and the impact of science on reproductive health during the twentieth century. The chapter on informed consent is fascinating in its detail of the intense struggle between those who felt their mission to be informing women about the possible risks associated with the pill, and those who desired to provide women with a reliable method of preventing unwanted pregnancies.”
-- Sally Guttmacher, Journal of Public Health Policy

“Intelligent and well-structured … An admirable exercise in social history.”
-- Richard Davenport-Hines, Nature

“This is an exemplary study of how the nation which first had access to oral contraceptives first came to terms with their advantages, and their drawbacks.”
-- Jon Turney, Times Literary Supplement