In Hospital Land USA, Wendy Simonds analyzes the wide-reaching powers of medicalization: the dynamic processes by which medical authorities, institutions, and ideologies impact our everyday experiences, culture, and social life. Simonds documents her own Hospital Land adventures and draws on a wide range of U.S. cultural representations — from memoirs to medical mail, from hospital signs to disaster movies — in order to urge critical thinking about conventional notions of care, he...

Facing the polar forces of an epidemic of Cesarean sections and epidurals and home-like labor rooms, American birth is in transition. Caught between the most extreme medicalization — best seen in a Cesarean section rate of nearly 30 percent — and a rhetoric of women’s "choices" and "the natural," women and their midwives, doulas, obstetricians, and nurses labor on. Laboring On offers the voices of all of these practitioners, all women trying to help women, as they struggle with th...

Few topics in health policy have generated as much debate—and frustration—among public health experts as the issue of vaccine safety. Misinformation around the science of vaccination continues to spread, and too often the media fails to report bad science for what it is.Using science-informed analysis alongside original art and powerful essays, health science leader Timothy Caulfield debunks the myths and false assumptions about vaccination safety and effectiveness. Accessible, inf...

An unprecedented and definitive collection of rabble-rousing writings on women’s health, Voices of the Women’s Health Movement explores a range of provocative topics from reproductive rights to sexuality to motherhood. Trail-blazing advocate Barbara Seaman and health activist Laura Eldridge bring the revolutionary ideas of several generations together in this powerful new book celebrating women’s bodies, and women’s voices. The more than two hundred contributors include Jennifer B...

Co-founder and editor in chief of The Huffington Post Arianna Huffington shows how our cultural dismissal of sleep as time wasted compromises our health and our decision-making and undermines our work lives, our personal lives--and even our sex lives in this New York Times bestseller.We are in the midst of a sleep deprivation crisis, with profound consequences to our health, our job performance, our relationships and our happiness. What we need is...

A thought-provoking combination of practical parenting information and scientific analysis, Our Babies, Ourselves is the first book to explore why we raise our children the way we do--and to suggest that we reconsider our culture's traditional views on parenting.New parents are faced with innumerable decisions to make regarding the best way to care for their baby, and, naturally, they often turn for guidance to friends and family members who have already raised children. B...

Here is your guide to the fastest-growing trend in childbirth—a tradition as old as motherhood itself. Doulas, or professional labor assistants, have led thousands of expectant women through the birthing process in a way that’s safe and meaningful, and that creates the birth and postbirth experience all mothers long for.What exactly dodoulas do?How to find one that suits you.What are the “trade secrets” only doulas know but every woman should be aw...

In the United States, more than half the women who give birth are given drugs to induce or speed up labor; for nearly a third of mothers, childbirth is major surgery -- the cesarean section. For women who want an alternative, choice is often unavailable: Midwives are sometimes inaccessible; in eleven states they are illegal. In one of those states, even birthing centers are outlawed.When did birth become an emergency instead of an emergence? Since when is normal, physiological birth a crim...

An engrossing examination of the science behind the little-known world of sleep.Like many of us, journalist David K. Randall never gave sleep much thought. That is, until he began sleepwalking. One midnight crash into a hallway wall sent him on an investigation into the strange science of sleep.In Dreamland, Randall explores the research that is investigating those dark hours that make up nearly a third of our lives. Taking readers from military battlefields to chi...

"[An] engrossing survey of the history of childbirth." —Stephen Lowman, Washington PostMaking and having babies—what it takes to get pregnant, stay pregnant, and deliver—have mystified women and men throughout human history. The insatiably curious Randi Hutter Epstein journeys through history, fads, and fables, and to the fringe of science. Here is an entertaining must-read—an enlightening celebration of human life.

The New York Times bestseller from the author of Chasing the Scream, offering a radical new way of thinking about depression and anxiety.What really causes depression and anxiety--and how can we really solve them? Award-winning journalist Johann Hari suffered from depression since he was a child and started taking antidepressants when he was a teenager. He was told that his problems were caused by a chemical imbalance in his brain. As an adult, tr...

The trusted editors of Our Bodies, Ourselves, called “a feminist classic” by The New York Times, present a comprehensive guide to pregnancy and childbirth, from prenatal care and emotional well-being to how to handle the pain of childbirth.Pregnancy and birth are as ordinary and extraordinary as breathing, thinking, or loving. But as soon as you announce you’re expecting, you may be bombarded with advice from every angle—well-meaning friends, rela...