THE MEANS OF REPRODUCTION: In this groundbreaking work of investigative journalism by the author of The New York Times bestseller Kingdom Coming, Michelle Goldberg exposes a global battle over women’s reproductive rights that pits reformers against an international alliance of fundamentalists, with profound consequences for both individual lives and worldwide development.
In a work of incisive cultural analysis and deep reporting, Michelle Goldberg shows how the emancipation of women has become the key human rights struggle of the 21st Century. The Means of Reproduction travels through four continents, examining issues like abortion, female circumcision and Asia's missing girls to show how the battle over women's bodies has been globalized, and how the United States has, depending on who is in power, alternately advanced and impeded women’s rights worldwide. In reporting that encompasses both dramatic human stories and the rarified realms of international policymaking, Goldberg elucidates the economic, demographic and health consequences of women's oppression, which affect more than simply half the world’s population.
As The Means of Reproduction reveals, the conflict between self-determination and patriarchal tradition has crucial implications for global development. Empowering women is the key to addressing both overpopulation and rapid population decline, helping the third world climb out of poverty and retarding the spread of AIDS. Yet attempts to improve women's status elicit fierce opposition from conservatives who see women's submission as key to their own national or religious identity.
Goldberg reaches back through the last half century to explain how control of women's fertility has been a kind of proxy for other ideological struggles. From the anti-communist genesis of America's attempts to stem population growth in poor countries to the current worldwide attack on women's rights as a decadent Western imposition, Goldberg explores the interplay between the great issues of our time and the politics of sex and childbearing. Finally, The Means of Reproduction shows how women, strengthened by a solidarity that transcends borders, are fighting for freedom.
LATEST Reviews, interviews and stories about "The Means of Reproduction" Nick Kristof, New York Times Columnist Katharine Jose, The New York Observer Review: The Means of Reproduction Elizabeth Isadora Gold, Time out New York Review: Women and Children First Sarah Posner, The American Prospect Author Interview: Michelle Goldberg Christine Smallwood, The Nation Review: Michelle Goldberg: women's rights - globally Justin Berton, The San Francisco Chronicle
Anna Clark, Bitch Magazine Author Interview: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World Joan Frawley Desmond, National Review Excerpts from The Means of Reproduction Read an excerpt in The American Prospect
Michelle GOLDBERG AND TERRY GROSS DISCUSS The Means of Reproduction on Fresh Air: Listen to Michelle on Fresh Air
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ADVANCE PRAISe for THE MEANS OF REPRODUCTION "We know how to radically improve women's lives around the world: give them education, power, and the liberty to control of their own bodies. We also know something even more important: that improving women's lives in this way makes the whole world better place—healthier, more prosperous, and more secure. Michelle Goldberg's sweeping saga about how this consensus came about, and the tragic impediments to putting it into practice, may be the most important book you'll ever read about the future of the human race." –Rick Perlstein author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fall of the American Consensus
Goldberg's book is more than a scrupulously researched chronicle of the brutalities inflicted on women throughout the underdeveloped world by the determination of antedeluvian religious institutions, and governments that protect them, to control female bodies. What this book demonstrates convincingly is that there can be no economic progress in any country that denies women basic human rights, and that women cannot exercise their human rights if they cannot determine when to have sex, whether or when to marry, and how many children they have. Ms. Goldberg's message is that the repression of women lies at the heart of all oppressive societies" –Susan Jacoby, author of The age of American Unreason
“The Means of Reproduction is a bold and vital book, a story about life and those who twist that word to front for agendas of sexual control around the world. We're lucky that we have Michelle Goldberg, a brilliant and clear-eyed journalist, to bring us news of how the struggle over reproductive rights has gone global, as the American Right teams up with reactionary forces abroad. Goldberg calls it one of the most important fights of our time; after you read The Means of Reproduction, you will, too. A landmark book.” — Jeff Sharlet, New York Times bestselling author of The Family
PRAISe for Kingdom coming –Katha Pollitt, columnist, The Nation ; author, Virginity or Death! : And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time – Joe Conason, author of The Hunting of the President, Big Lies, and The Raw Deal
“Kingdom Coming reveals just how thoroughly our national discourse has been corrupted by the mad work of religious literalists. Goldberg demonstrates — elegantly and persuasively— that tens of millions of our neighbors are working each day to obliterate the separation between church and state, to supplant scientific rationality with Iron Age fantasies, and to achieve a Christian theocracy in the 21st century. This is a terrifying and necessary book.” –Sam Harris, author, The End of Faith
– Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism and Power and the Idealists |
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