Roll over, Dr. Lamaze, and make room for Epstein’s eyebrow-raising history.
Medical journalist Epstein provides a sharp, sassy history of childbirth.
The book is as much a study in sociology as historical snapshot of human birthing practices and gynecological advances, with particular emphasis on developments in the late 19th- and 20th-century United States. Beginning with Eve, who “started the whole birth-is-painful thing,” and concluding in the present with couples “who sperm-shop and freeze eggs for one reason or another,” Epstein convincingly demonstrates that the human desire to control all aspects of birth has been “a goal since antiquity.” The author covers several centuries’-worth of wildly divergent birthing customs and practices. From the earliest books on women’s health, written by monks, to childbed fever being spread by health practitioners and birthing wards, to early-20th-century feminists arguing that upper-class women had weaker physiologies than their working-class sisters, to the staggering statistic that C-section rates in America have risen 46 percent in the past ten years with no corresponding drop in maternal mortality, Epstein ably investigates the charged, ever-evolving scientific and social perspectives on birth. The author’s engaging sarcasm, evident even in a caption of an illustration of an absurd obstetric contraption—“Nineteenth-century Italian do-it-yourself forceps. The fad never took off”)—lends this chronicle a welcome punch and vitality often absent from medical histories.
Roll over, Dr. Lamaze, and make room for Epstein’s eyebrow-raising history.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-393-06458-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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