Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born
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“Well-researched and engaging . . . Birth is a clever, almost irreverent look at an enduring everyday miracle. (A-)” —Entertainment Weekly“Wonderful. Packed full of information, a brilliant mixture of ancient wisdom and modern science.” —Kate Mosse, author of the New York Times best seller, Labyrinth“Birth is a power-packed book. . . . A lively, engaging, and often witty read, a quirky, eye-opening account of one of life’s most elemental experiences.” —The Boston Globe Published to widespread acclaim, Tina Cassidy’s smart, engaging book is the first world history of childbirth in fifty years. From evolution to the epidural and beyond, Tina Cassidy presents an intelligent, enlightening, and impeccably researched cultural history of how and why we’re born the way we are. Women have been giving birth for millennia but that’s about the only constant in the final stage of the great process that is human reproduction. Why is it that every culture and generation seems to have its own ideas about the best way to give birth? Cassidy explores the physical, anthropological, political, and religious factors that have and will continue to influence how women bring new life into the world. The Washington Post - Sara Sklaroff In this breezy popular history, Cassidy, a former Boston Globe reporter and editor, surveys centuries of terrible childbirths around the world, attended by doctors, nurses and midwives with strange theories and, in more than a few cases, deeply sadistic streaks. Tirelessly wide-eyed, Cassidy details how laboring women have been strapped down and shackled, drugged into oblivion and ripped open with a macabre array of tools more suited to taxidermy than obstetrics. It's amazing anyone got out of the womb alive.
