The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World [Hardcover]

Michelle Goldberg (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 2, 2009

A groundbreaking new work on the global battle over reproductive rights by the author of The New York Times bestseller Kingdom Coming

Award-winning journalist Michelle Goldberg shows how the emancipation of women has become the key human rights struggle of the twenty-first century in The Means of Reproduction. Deeply reported across four continents, the book explores issues such as abortion, female circumcision, and Asia's missing girls to dramatize the connections between international policymaking and individual lives. Goldberg demonstrates how women's rights are key to addressing both overpopulation and rapid population decline, reducing world poverty, and retarding the spread of AIDS. Sweeping and ambitious, this is a must-read book for feminists, health and policy workers, and anyone concerned about the future of our world.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Michelle Goldberg is an investigative journalist and the author of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, a New York Times Bestseller which was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. A former senior writer at Salon.com, her work has appeared in Glamour, The New Republic, Rolling Stone, The Guardian (UK) and many other publications, and she has taught at NYU's graduate school of journalism. The Means of Reproduction won the 2008 J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress Award.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The; First Edition edition (April 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594202087
• ISBN-13: 978-1594202087
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #879,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 57 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars All the facts, not opinions to support Reproductive Health April 5, 2009

By Zoe Ann Nicholson

Format:Hardcover

I first read about this book at RHRealityCHeck.org in an interview of Michelle Goldberg by Mandy Van Deven. I ordered it immediately and had to wait for it to arrive on April 4. This book is landing in our march toward reproductive intelligence, liberty and health at precisely the right moment. While social justice is unfolding; the backlash is mounting, gasping its last breaths, this book is rich with vision and understanding.
American women need to understand the reach of their influence, their dollars and their personal religion. There are places in the world where pregnancy and childbirth can be punishment, torture and deadly, US policies are contributing through policies and funding certain programs, unfunding others, gag orders and relinquishing responsibility to religious organizations.
Michelle explains all of this and more, making it clear how decisions in Washington DC or a neighborhood clinic end up practiced in Africa or India with no understanding of the cultural consequences.

The Means of Reproduction is brilliant, responsible and approachable. I highly recommend it. Finally a book that makes it clear that American women, with all our freedom, need to commit to provide women world-wide with comprehensive birth control information and methods.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting & Important June 12, 2009

By Sophia Linson

Format:Hardcover

I highly recommend this book! The book is obviously meticulously researched and there is a lot of factual information, but it is never boring. It is very well written - the author addresses broad, complex issues and provides insightful analysis, but also brings in personal stories and descriptions of characters.
If you are interested in human rights, economic development, international politics or women's issues you will get a lot out of it.

35 of 44 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great read on radical right and reproduction April 5, 2009

By Frances Kissling

Format:Hardcover

Just read Nick Kristoff's op-ed column in the Sunday Times on the need for more funding for international family planning assistance. The Means of Reproduction is critical to a modern understanding of why something as simple and noncontroversial as family planning has been stalled for the last decade by the US religious right and the Vatican. Solid data, great stories and good analysis.