Choice Reads - Past Books
In September 2008, we re-launched Choice Reads as an online book-of-the-month club. Until July 2009, we posted a new book suggestion each month with a mini reader's guide. See the list below for past books.
 September 2008: Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born
By Tina Cassidy Tina Cassidy presents a lively, enlightening, and impeccably researched cultural history of how and why we are born the way we are.
October 2008:  The Humble Little Condom: A HistoryBy Aine Collier Description: Aine Collier provides a unique glimpse into human sexual habits, customs, beliefs, and attitudes in this first history of the prophylactic device that goes back to at least the ancient Egyptians.
 November 2008: Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
By Adrian Nicole LeBlanc Description: Journalist LeBlanc spent more than 10 years following two Latina women from the Bronx, and in this ambitious work, she tells their stories, beginning in the late 1980s with their young teen years.
 December 2008: The Baby Business: How Money, Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception
By Debora L. Spar Description: Harvard business professor Spar explores many aspects of the high-tech commodification of procreation, including the new entrepreneurial paradigm of maternity, in which the official "mother" simply finances the assemblage of sperm, purchased egg and hired womb and lays contractual claim to the finished infant.
 January 2009: Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty
By Dorothy Roberts Description: Dorothy Roberts' passionate and well-documented book looks at a less-talked about side of the battle for reproductive rights: the history of the social and governmental control of African American women's bodies.
 February/March 2009: The Kid: What Happened When My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant
By Dan Savage Description: Dan Savage shares his own story in The Kid, a hilarious account of his efforts – along with his partner – to adopt a child. The Kid is a wonderful, charming account that proves love knows no limits.
April 2009:  Everything Conceivable: How the Science of Assisted Reproduction Is Changing Our WorldBy Liza Mundy Description: Journalist Liza Mundy captures the human narratives, as well as the science, behind the controversial, multibillion-dollar fertility industry, and examines how this huge social experiment is transforming our most basic relationships and even our destiny as a species.
May 2009:  Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwifeby Peggy Vincent Description: Baby Catcher is a tale of the career of Peggy Vincent, a midwife in Berkeley, California. Whether a profound epiphany, a tweak on a universal theme, a dramatic crisis resolution, or a heartwarming tale of birth trivia, each chapter of Baby Catcher shares the feeling of the world moving aside to make room for one more soul.
June 2009:  This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctorby Susan Wicklund Description: Dr. Susan Wicklund chronicles her emotional and dramatic twenty-year career on the front lines of the abortion war. Through these intimate, complicated, and inspiring accounts, Wicklund reveals the truth about the women's clinics. As we enter the most fevered political fight over abortion America has ever seen, this raw and powerful memoir shows us what is at stake.
July 2009:  The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valuedby Ann Crittenden Description: This provocative book shows how mothers are systematically disadvantaged and made dependent by a society that exploits those who perform its most critical work. With passion and clarity, Crittenden demonstrates that proper rewards for mothers' essential contributions would only enhance the general welfare.
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