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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 618
EAN: 9780802143242
ISBN: 0802143245
Label: Grove Press
Manufacturer: Grove Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: September 10, 2007
Publisher: Grove Press
Sales Rank: 468127
Studio: Grove Press
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
“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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - fascinating history entertainment
I have had two children and I am pregnant with my third. I picked up this book at the library. I was fascinated, with the history and the improvements we have made with modern medicine. It is not a how to book; it doesn't prepare you for childbirth. It does however get you thinking about how you want your own births to happen. I think because I already have had two in the normal hospital setting I related to the information presented. The book did mention a link between Pitocen and Autism. I did more research on that on my own. After reading this it did motivate me to try and have a completely natural childbirth.
Rating: - Required reading for new mothers
So many of my friends were pushed into birth experiences that were not what they expected by not knowing what to expect when you get to the hospital, and why things are the way they are right now in the US. The truth is that it IS possible to have a positive childbirth experience, you just have to work to get it. Don't expect the hospital or doctors to look out for you, as they are working for the benefit of the hospital and not you. Read this book, get informed, find out what you want, and find practitioners in your area that agree with you.
Rating:  - Read for entertainment, not information
After hearing the birth stories of her mother and grandmother and after her own emergency C-section, Tina Cassidy starts contemplating the history of childbearing methods, starting with why it's so much harder for us to bear children than for a rhesus monkey (biped and big brain). She then examines midwives, where we give birth, doctors, pain relief, C-sections, forceps and other tools, and the role of the father.
Some of this book is truely squirm-inducing. She describes the horrific ways women have been forced to give birth-whether that's quietly and all alone in a barn or being strapped to a table and given drugs to lead to amnesia. She details the evolution of C-section techniques. Perhaps most disurbingly, she describes each of the ways a stillborn (or a baby though to be stillborn or stuck in the birth canal) have been removed in hopes of saving the mother's life. However, the only section I had to just skip a page on was her description of how placentas have been served. Because she is a journalist, Cassidy does tend to harp on the sensational, the big stories, and the odd cases.
This is an entertaining read, but it should not be used as an authoritiative source on the history of childbirth-this is intended to be entertaining, not source material. She plays fast an loose with statistics to serve her needs-for instance, to prove her point about maternal death rates, she examines the records kept by a doctor in a town a couple hundred years ago and compares it to ... Read More
Rating: - This book is wonderful!
The beginning drew me in right away! Some of the facts that Tina Cassidy had discovered, I was surprised about!
Rating: - One of the best books written today on birth
If you are pregnant, were pregnant, want to be pregnant, will be pregnant or any combination of the above, read this book. It acurately highlights the problems with birth in the United States today, offering an historical, scientific, and sociological view. It is dense, but well-written, and you will be so enthralled by her words that you will finish it within a day.
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