The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig Page B

Linda Ginzel, Boaz Keysar, Sayuri Hayakawa, and Richard Thaler.
    My friend Suzie Takacs of the Book Cellar in Chicago urged me to pursue this subject when I had doubts. The wonderful staff at Unabridged Books in Chicago supplied me with loads of good reading. Thanks also to the top-notch staff at the Book Stall in Winnetka, Mitchell Kaplan at Books & Books in Miami, the Biographers International Organization, and the Tucson Festival of Books.
    Jean Halberstam kindly granted me access to materials used by her late husband, David Halberstam, in his book The Fifties . Thanks to my friend Robert Solomon for introducing me to Ms. Halberstam. I’m also indebted to A. J. Baime for arranging my interview with Hugh Hefner. I want to thank Erna Buffie for sharing footage from her excellent documentary on the pill.
    Kristen Meldi and Dr. Steven Sondheimer read my manuscript to make sure I got the science right, and Jack Cassidy checked it for everything else. Any mistakes that remain are my fault, not theirs.
    I am also indebted to a number of librarians and archivists, none more so than Jeff Flannery at the Library of Congress, where I passed long hours immersed in the poems, letters, and scientific papers of Gregory Pincus. My thanks go out also to the staffs of the following institutions: the American Catholic History Research Center at the Catholic University of America; the Chicago History Museum; the Chicago Public Library (especially the John Merlo branch); the Clark University archives; the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard University; the DePaul University library; the Kinsey Institute and the Lilly Library, both at the University of Indiana; the Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School; the MIT Museum; the National Archives; the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College; the University of Southern California libraries; the Wisconsin Historical Society; and the Worcester Historical Museum.
    I must also thank the authors who explored the subject of birth control before I came around to it and put some of the building blocks of this story in place. The following writers took the time to offer their personal guidance: Annette B. Ramirez de Arellano, Laura Briggs, Ellen Chesler, Esther Katz, Margaret Marsh, Gay Talese, and James Reed. In addition, Loretta McLaughlin and Leon Speroff—the biographers of John Rock and Gregory Pincus, respectively—met with me in person, provided access to their research materials, read my manuscript, and offered excellent suggestions.
    I also benefited enormously from the work of the research team at the Margaret Sanger Papers Project at New York University, which has published a three-volume edition of Sanger’s papers and a two-series microfilm edition of documents from the collections at Smith College.
    This is my first book for W. W. Norton, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to work with such a talented and dedicated team. John Glusman is everything a writer could ask for in an editor: incisive, meticulous, and always pushing me to do my best. Thanks to Tara Powers for her scrupulous copyediting and to David High for his elegant design of the book’s jacket. Also at Norton, thanks to Jonathan Baker, Louise Brockett, Steve Colca, Drake McFeely, Ingsu Liu, Jeannie Luciano, Nancy Palmquist, Jess Purcell, Don Rifkin, Bill Rusin, and Devon Zahn.
    My agent, David Black, has been a steady believer in me—or my potential, anyway—for more than a decade. He and others at the David Black Agency, especially Antonella Iannarino and Sarah Smith, have been among my most indefatigable champions.
    I’ve heard it said that writing is lonely work, but not for me. I’ve been encouraged, coddled, sustained, and entertained while working on this book for the past three years better than any writer could ever hope to be. I have my family to thank for that. My parents continue to urge me, as they have all my life, to work hard, follow my passions, and be creative. My