Book Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Margaret (Higgins) Sanger, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thomson Gale. The length of the entry is 402 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Book Description

Customer Reviews (5)

know your history
It is difficult for women of today to understand a time when knowledge of basic biology was denied them.We don't know the fear of producing children which we are not healthy enough to produce or care for.

Before you it in judgement of Margaret Sanger or any feminist, read your history.Learn how laws were written and interpreted 100 years ago and realize how much things have changed because of such women.

As much as religious conservatives want to villify Sanger
...the reality is that she fought hard to make access to BASIC contraceptive information available to ALL families--wealthy, middle-class, poor, immigrant, WASP, African-American, etc.

Her battle against Anthony Comstock's puritanical Comstock Law--which made it illegal to give a pamphlet to a woman explaining basic menstruation--is legendary.Her article "Comstockery in America," written in 1915 and discussed in this book, highlighted the campaign by government officials to keep basic information out of the hands of the average person.

Special interest groups have created a campaign over the past 20 years to smear Sanger as a eugenicist, writing books that are published by biased publishing companies as part of a clear agenda.This autobiography stands on its own as one woman's story about her work to spread basic information to families who asked for it.

Just remember who she really is.
There is more to Margaret than she tells. This is all you really need to know: "The most merciful thing a large family can do to one of its infant members is to kill it" - Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger, a great woman
Growing up the daughter of a practicing lay midwife in the middle of the Hippie Era, I have seen the consequences of not planning ahead before making babies. Margaret Sanger is a great historical figure for everyone, female and male alike, and her memory has been unfairly sullied by funamentalist ninnies and misogynists. I wholly support her vision, with the proviso that because of the increase in average lifespan because of modern medicine, none of us, even the fittest, can breed indiscriminately, and it's even more critical that people with genetic health issues as well as people whose families haven't fit into society very well exercise the better part of valor and refrain from reproducing.

Autobiographers do not make good historians.
To interpret yourself and hope everyone after you swallows your interpretation was the wistful hope of this author.What a stark comparison between the Margaret Sanger of this autobiography and the real Margaret Sanger! What the world remembers is that her family planning clinics were usually located in Black neighborhoods.Ms. Sanger doesn't consciously disclose the connection between Darwinian Evolution and her campaign to reduce the birth rate among peoples she considered to be inferior, of lower intelligence, poor or poorly bred.
Go to a real historian like George Grant for the full story.(Grant is as readable as a good story-teller.)>Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood<, a book he wrote in 1988, tells what Margaret Sanger was really like. ... Read more

Book Description
Margaret Sanger was the founder of the birth control movement in the United States. A trained nurse by profession she founded a magazine on birth control as well as the first birth control clinic in the U.S. located in Brooklyn. She organized the first World Population Conference and was the first president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. This is her fascinating story. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

The Repackaging of Margaret Sanger
Don't expect an accurate depiction of Sanger from this propaganda piece.Save yourself a lot of time and read the following quotes if you're really interested in finding out what kind of woman Margaret Sanger really was and what type of agenda she promoted for America:

On the extermination of blacks:
"We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population," she said, "if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America, by Linda Gordon

On abortion:
"The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race (Eugenics Publ. Co., 1920, 1923)

On the right of married couples to bear children:
"Couples should be required to submit applications to have a child." -- Margaret Sanger "Plan for Peace." (Birth Control Review, April 1932)

a continued killer of many
Margaret Sanger was no better than Hitler with her population control.She chose to focus on control because she was one of many children from her family and obviously did not get enough attention.Now she focuses on being selfish.Most of us have children because we love them.For those who have abortions, they need to stay out of other peoples beds if they can't handle the responsibility or the unselfishness of having a child or children.

Sanger Was A Strategist, but a Racist
In reviewing Sanger's autobiography, there is a difficult balance to manage.

On one hand, Sanger had a genuine desire to reduce unwanted births and, indirectly, reduce the population of the poor and mistreated.

On the other hand is the ungirdings of her beliefs: that African-Americans were second-class citizens. Backing what she believed was a growing acceptance of eugenics, that to have a better world, the population needed to be genetically purer. For Sanger, not too different that Hitler, this meant encouraging abortions among African-Americans.

To read Sanger's auto-biography alone might mislead the reader into believing her views were founded in cleanly laid-out welfare theories and of women's rights. That was part of it... but deeper still... and the reason I'm not comfortable fully recommending this book... is her core racial prejudice under the guise of freedom.

I understand my review might offend fans of Sanger, but read it in context.

Pick up George Grant's book on it... get past his over-emphasis on his own conservative views, and read his analysis of her own comments. Better yet... if you can find one, read Doug Scott's "Bad Choices" expose of the foundingand practices of Planned Parenthood. Again, exceedingly conservative and not for the close-minded, but his citations of Sanger's letters and official documents are astounding and alarming.

Anthony Trendl

Sanger as Activist & Thinker
Margaret Sanger is not only one of the most influential women in 20th century America, she's the rare sort of individual whose autobiographies arebetterthan the biographies that others have written about her. The Sanger described by others is typically little more than an icon, a stilted"Woman of Valor."The real Sanger you'll discover here is far more interesting and in many ways far more apt to reveal flaws and shortcomings.

This is a reprint of her 1938 autobiography, written by a mature Sanger as she was retiring from public life to become the birth control movement's senior representative. Her 1931 My Fight for Birth Control has more fire to it, but at that time she was much more ill-tempered. She'd beenpushed out of the American Birth Control League that she had founded and was having little success in her attempts to get federal birth control legislation passed. If you read one of her autobiographies, this should be the one.

Just remember that you will not get a full picture ofSanger from this book. Here you get the events of her life told from the inside. To understand what motivated her you need to read the book she termed her 'head' book, her 1922 The Pivot of Civilization (recently republished with additional material). It's her most intellectual book and contains an introduction by her friend H. G. Wells.

It is demeaning of Sanger's legacythat so few of those who claim to take her seriously as an activist take the time to examine her ideas. It was Sanger the thinker who inspired Sanger the activist. We must understand both to understand the movement she founded. ... Read more

Book Description
This book includes Sanger's writings on marriage and children, the labor movement, socialism, prison reform, pacifism, eugenics and sex education. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

A Great Book
An interesting book on early 20th century America that many of the recent immigrants like me are not aware of. It is fascinating and I highly recommend it.

All the truth, painful or not
First, I'm a Margaret Sanger fan.Her work did as much to ultimately liberate women as did the right to vote and the attempted passage of the ERA.I love this book because Dr. Reed has read every single piece of primary research available on Sanger, and then overlaid it with her own (Reed's) summations and conclusions.It is deeply researched, has the blessings of the Sanger family, and provides a non-biased look at a woman, though changing the world, who still had personal flaws and failings.It's arranged chronologically and also contains short biographies of each soul mentioned in the book, an in-depth section of footnotes, a thorough bibliography, and a complete index.This was not Dr. Reed's disseratation -- but it certainly could have been.

Margaret Sanger continues to inspire
A beautifully written, passionate, intimate look at a seminal figure in America's history. While Sanger has been justly honored as an early 20th century feminist icon, her fight to publicize the importance of family planning and legalized birth control have shaped rights and institutions we take for granted today. Miriam Reed has crafted an excellent new resource for anyone interested in learning more about this fascinating woman. Good job!

Sanger's LifeNOT in Her Own Words
This poorly written book offers more of the words of the author, Miriam Reed, thanSanger's. There is no doubt that Margaret Sanger was and is one of the most unforgettable and fascinating figures in American history, but this book (I don't know how to define it) does not do her justice.Snippets of Sanger's words arescattered throughout undermining the author's intent, the documents are badly introduced andoddly over-interpreted. If the author wanted to write a biography she should have. If readers want to read Sanger's own words, check out her Autobiography. This one just doesn't do it.I, for one, am extremely disappointed.

Not enough Sanger
This selection of Sanger documents is odd and not made with the best of care.While Reed claims that this is Sanger's "Life in Her Words" there is probably more of Reed than Sanger in the book, if you counted words.Each document is introduced by a lengthy and not all that well written essay, and equal weight (and space) seem to be given to Sanger's views on race and eugenics and her recipes for chicken curry. There is some very sloppy research here as well, with no attribution.Reed's biographical sketches are incomplete and in one case, "Oliver" Johnson instead of "Olive" Johnson, downright embarrassing.The fact that Reed disputes Sanger on the name and gender of her British associate would be laughable if it didn't raise so many questions about her other identifications.Reed claims a Ph.D. on the cover, but I don't think it could be in history. ... Read more

Book Description
An excellent historical resource on the American birth control movement. --POPULATION TODAY ... Read more

Book Description
Margaret Sanger, the American birth-control and population-control advocate who founded Planned Parenthood, stands like a giant among her contemporaries. With her dominating yet winning personality, she helped generate shifts of opinion on issues that were not even publicly discussed prior to her activism, while her leadership was arguably the single most important factor in achieving social and legislative victories that set the parameters for today's political discussion of family-planning funding, population-control aid, and even sex education.

This work addresses Sanger's ideas concerning birth control, eugenics, population control, and sterilization against the backdrop of the larger eugenic context. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Feminists: Read this book!
This book exposes the fear that is at the heart of the modern reproductive rights movement: fear of female reproductive power. We need a women's movement that allows us to be ourselves, instead of a women's movement that demands that we chemically castrate ourselves. Angela Franks points the way to a new women's movement that is based on what is truly distinctive about women. We need to celebrate motherhood, not fear it. Angela Franks shows that Margaret Sanger and her movement were strongly eugenic, and feared too much reproduction by people they considered unfit. The women's movement has never recovered.

Read Lady Eugenist too
Those who're interested in this book might also want to check out a newly released book, Lady Eugenist: Feminist Eugenics in the Speeches and Writings of Victoria Woodhull and a companion book that will soon be released, Free Lover: Sex, Marriage and Eugenics in the Writings of Victoria Woodhull.

In her 1938 autobiography, Margaret Sanger noted that "Eugenics, which started long before my time, had once been defined as including free love and the prevention of conception." Eugenics and free love was a reference to Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for President (1872), for a time a fierce advocate of free love, and a life-long advocate of eugenics and state-controlled child rearing. In 1927, in what was perhaps Woodhull's last public statement, she praised Buck v. Bell, a US Supreme Court decision declaring forced sterilization constitutional and, according to the New York Times, told a reporter that she had "advocated that fifty years ago."

The two books mentioned above present detailed evidence that one of the nation's leading feminists was advocating eugenics, then called stirpiculture, in the 1870s, three decades before Francis Galton took up the cause in earnest and four decades before it acquired a significant following in Margaret Sanger and others. That demolishes the argument of those who claim that feminists such as Sanger only adopted eugenic rhetoric because the movement was too powerful to ignore. When Woodhull took up eugenics, she was virtually the only public figure in the U.S. speaking on the topic. She 'mainstreamed' an issue, controlled human breeding, that had previously only been discussed by strange utopian cults on the American frontier, such as the Oneida Community.

The historical reality is that, far from being united in defending 'reproductive freedom,' certain groups of well-connected and powerful women have been some of the strongest proponents of the government limiting the birth rates of women they consider "unfit" or inferior. (You see this in their sneers at 'stay-at-home' mothers.) Newspapers noted that Woodhull attracted those sorts of women in the 1870s-90s when she advocated eugenics. They continued to do so when Charlotte Perkins Gilman promoted negative eugenics in the 1910s, and when Sanger did so with her birth control movement from 1917 on.

Woodhull's speeches and pamphlets also demonstrate that there is a close connection between those who want to control who can have children and those who want to limit the rights of parents to rear their children after they are born, as illustrated by a recent Ninth Circuit decision denying the right of parents to protect their grade-school children from sexual questions. These are most emphatically not people who believe in protecting anyone's "privacy."

--Michael W. Perry, Seattle
Editor of The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective by Margaret Sanger
Editor of Eugenics and Other Evils by G. K. Chesterton

Exposing the Agenda of Planned Parenthood's Founder
TIME magazine called Margaret Sanger one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century, saying that "her crusade to legalize birth control spurred the movement for women's liberation." While many remember her advocacy for birth control, few remember or give due consideration to the eugenic philosophy that drove Sanger and her allies in the birth control, and later population control or "family planning" movements. This book corrects that significant historical deficit.

In this book, Franks shows that any concern Sanger had for women's rights was secondary to her larger agenda -- helping to create a better race by controlling the fertility of those she saw as society's least "fit" members -- the poor, the disabled, the "feebleminded," the sickly, the epileptic, the alcoholic, etc. Where persuasion worked, that was fine, but as Franks points out, Sanger and her allies were prepared to use coercion when they felt it was necessary to achieve their eugenic aims.

Franks traces what she identifies as the "control movement" from its earliest days in the 1920s when sterilization programs began to spring up in Virginia, Alabama, North Carolina, and later California to the 1990s when U.N. "family planning" money helped support forced sterilizations and abortions in China. Along the way, she identifies the key players, policies, and programs that helped to mainstream many of the ideas that the world once found so abhorrent in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.

There are those in our modern PC culture that might be tempted to dismiss such charges, but this book is thorough and well documented, with over 1,200 footnotes and a bibliography featuring about a thousand books, articles, and interviews on Sanger, her associates, and the organizations they founded and led.

The tone is academic, but the language is generally accessible, so that both scholars and activists alike will benefit from the reading of it.

Despite Sanger's celebration as a liberator of women and the feminist hagiographies that have been written of Planned Parenthood's founder, Franks argues that Sanger's eugenic ideas are antithetical to freedom and to true feminism, aiming to suppress precisely what it is that makes women women.

Sanger certainly had enormous influence, but before deciding whether that influence was good or bad, one would be well advised to read this book.

... Read more

Book Description
Combines biography of M. Sanger with social history of birth control movement. Winner of Bancroft Prize in American History 1971 and John Gilmary Shea Award of American Catholic Historical Association 1970. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Hero for Women's Rights
Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger. By David M. Kennedy. 320 pp. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1970. $30.

David Kennedy is the McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.Reflecting his interdisciplinary training in American Studies, which combined the fields of history, literature, and economics, Professor Kennedy's scholarship is notable for its integration of economic and cultural analysis with social and political history.

Professor Kennedy teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in the history of the twentieth-century United States, American political and social thought, American foreign policy,
American literature, and the comparative development of democracy in Europe and America.

He has had ten books published to date and written over twenty articles with two on Margaret Sanger.He has received numerous awards including the John Gilmary Shea Prize (for Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, 1970 and the Bancroft Prize (for Birth Control in America), 1971.

His 1970 book, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, embraced the medical, legal, political, and religious dimensions of the subject and helped to pioneer the emerging field of women's history.It is a highly critical study of Sanger's pre-World War II career that can still be appreciated by readers in today's society.It is not a true autobiography
of Margaret Sanger but a chronological listing and explanation of the events that occurred involving the American birth control movement which she was a crusader for.To fully
understand Sanger's involvement in the birth control movement the author lets us know who Margaret Sanger was and the events that caused her to become a leading birth control advocate,
feminist, and activist.

Margaret Sanger was born in 1879 in Corning, New York, one of eleven children of Irish-American parents.Her mother was Catholic, her father a radical follower of the freethinker Robert Ingersoll and single-taxer Henry George. Sanger later attributed the family's lack of prosperity and her mother's death at forty-nine to her parents' having had so many children.

The inequality she observed between them stimulated her
lifelong social activism.Margaret, with help from her sisters, attended Claverack College, after which she went to nursing school.She did not immediately use her medical training because, she later wrote, William Sanger "pressured" her into marrying and leaving school in 1902. William Sanger, an
artist and architect, moved the family (soon to include three children) to suburban Westchester.

While he commuted to New York, Margaret grew restless as a result of her isolation and full-time housekeeping.In 1910 the Sanger's moved back to Manhattan, and Margaret began working as a visiting nurse on the Lower East Side.She became active in radical politics, joining the Socialist party and working with the Industrial Workers of the World in supporting several militant strikes.From this network she absorbed feminist ideas and came to agree with Emma Goldman that women had a right to control their sexual and reproductive lives.Her work as a nurse with the poor further convinced her that birth control was vital to women's health and freedom.

In 1912 she began to write and speak on sexual and health issues under socialist auspices and was encouraged by her enthusiastic reception.The censorship of one of her columns by the U.S. Post Office in 1913 brought her more publicity.In 1914 she published several issues of the Woman Rebel, a radical feminist newspaper, and Family Limitation, a pamphlet intended for mass distribution and containing explicit instructions for contraception. A warrant was issued for her arrest, and she fled to Europe, where she studied with Havelock Ellis a sexual
psychologist.

She returned to the United States in 1915 to find a nationwide birth-control movement under way; the charges against her were dropped.In 1916 she and her sister Mrs. Evelyn Byrne, who was also a trained nurse, and a third woman, Fania Mindell
established a birth-control clinic in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn as an act of civil disobedience, since providing birth control remained illegal.Clinics were now opening throughout the country, in defiance of the laws against them, and attracted many clients. Sanger became increasingly angered by the Left-wing party's refusal to make birth control a priority and decided on a strategy of making legalization of contraception a single-issue campaign.Distancing herself from her left-wing friends, she now sought support from physicians and academic eugenicist's.Their influence replaced that of the feminist and socialist movements, then in retreat, and Sanger sometimes used eugenic arguments for birth control that it could help reduce the birthrate of "inferiors."

In 1921 she established the American Birth Control League, a national lobbying group, which became Planned Parenthood in 1942.Very much needing personal recognition, Sanger thought of birth control as her own invention and her leadership as irreplaceable.Her aggressive campaigning, however, did play a large part in the legalization of contraception by many states
between the 1920s and 1960s.This movement was not the true success she had fought for, because contraception became understood, not as a woman's right, but as a medical matter
requiring a doctor's prescription.

This book was extremely well written, well researched, and well organized.The book was fair to the material it was interpreting.The author points out that "despite all her defects of posture and policy, Margaret Sanger, it could be argued, had been indispensable to the ultimate success of her cause.Mrs. Sanger then slipped quietly from the position of leadership after twenty-five years.So effectively had she educated society that it seemed no longer to need her."
This book held my interest all the way to the end.It reinforces my belief that Margaret Sanger should be considered a hero for women's rights.This book is a real contribution to the subject of birth control and to Sanger and helped me understand Margaret Sanger more as a person and a female.

Rachel Dvorkin
Roosevelt University
Schaumburg, IL ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Historical Revision?
None of the reviews mention the fact of Sanger's deep involvement with the pre-WWII Nazi movement and her racist devotion to the practice of eugenics. Any in-depth study of Sanger's life would surely reveal these involvements;a cleansed portrait of Ms. Sanger as this one apparently is can only be theproduct of a politically correct agenda.

Based on these reviews, I won'tbe buying or reading this book.

Fascinating, in-depth look at a remarkable woman
I've just finished reading this book for a women's history class.I found it hard to put down.It's a shame that it is out of print, as Margaret Sanger's life story, and her struggle for the reproductive rights of womenand female autonomy, make for enlightening reading.Ellen Chesler put inan enormous amount of work, documenting every detail, and weaving the wholeinto a very readable book.I would definitely recommend this to anyreader, not only those interested in the empowerment of women, but alsothose NOT interested in it, since it might change their minds!Definitelyan important work, and an important woman, for gaining an understanding ofhow the 20th century has been shaped. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Killer Angel
This is an excellent primer and succinct summary of the truth about the origins of "Planned Parenthood."Anyone who wants to know the truth about America's disgraceful abortion mills, should begin with this book.You can trust Grant to tell you the truth, in contrast to the communist propaganda we usually get fed!Thank you George!

Not much here
There's no original research here; as is clear from the footnotes, the author has just taken material from standard biographies of Sanger and used it to present her in the most negative light possible.Sanger did favor eugenics (as did most people in her era), and she was a socialist, and she had a rather unorthodox family life.There isn't much argument about the facts.But to use these facts to portray her as a monster of iniquity (and a worse murderer than Stalin or Hitler) is just silly, unless you regard a blastocyst as the moral equivalent of a human being.

Margaret Sanger the monster
Her views were just as monstrous as Hitler's, because they came from the same philosophical genetic line of thinking. Her own words condemn her. She indeed targeted the poor and down-trodden of society with the same views as the Third Reich. She saw the black community as hitler saw the disabled of Germany "useless eaters." Read this book to find out what she really believed. Don't just listen to theemotional-laden lies of Planned Parenthood and their misinformed rabble,[..]

I've never seen pro abortionists deal with the real facts concerning Margaret Sanger. The facts are presented in books like "Killer Angel," but they can't "handle" the facts. All they can do is appeal to the emotions-- "Oh the starving children..." etc. So... their solution is that the children are better off dead, than starving! Good argument!? No. Stupid argument -- just an appeal to the emotions. "Starving Children?" "Abused Children?" Why change the argument? No one said that anti-abortionists were pro starvation or pro abuse. What greater abuse can you have than the killing of innocent children? What you actually have is a promoting and philosophical acceptance of, and practice of genocide for convenience-sake. Shame on anyone who would try to defend what Margaret Sanger said and lived for. You may as well try to defend Hitler himself!

I load of crap
This author has no clue what he is taking about. He is continuing to spread a lie that is only confusing people. Margaret Sanger was a great woman who fought for other women to have the right to have control over their own body.
His rant on birth control is mind numbing. Birth control prevents abortions and Planned Parenthood wants to prevent abortions. Yes they provide abortions, but they also provide health services to uninsured women, fight for women to have a say to what happens to their bodies, and educates all on proper sex education. Margaret Sanger would be proud of what Planned Parenthood has become. There are much better and truthful books on Margaret then this one. I only gave this one star because it was the only way I could sumbit the review!

Just A Balance To Those Planned Parenthood Nitwits
Margaret Sanger's own words should sink the ship of Planned Parenthood. I'm glad that Grant wrote such a book. His writings are needed to balance out the Planned Parenthood [material] being rammed down the throat of society. Although I do agree with the...reviewer's notes who gave the book 4 stars out of 5, I thought that my review of 5 out of 5 is more fitting... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Inappropriate Praise
Some of the praise for Margaret Sanger being posted here is inappropriate. I've spent hundreds of hours exploring the marvelously complete Margaret Sanger Papers (microfilm) on which this book is based.I have two file cabinet drawers filled with material from those papers. I edited for publication her 1922 bestseller and added 31 chapters of period documents so readers can understand the coded language she's using to offer different messages to two different audiences, one a 'progressive' elite that thinks inferior 'unfit' women should be kept from having children and the other ordinary people honestly concerned about the plight of poor women. That's The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective.

I also edited an edition of G. K. Chesterton's Eugenics and Other Evils, one of the few books critical of eugenics to be published in the 1920s. In nine appendices I placed articles by his English eugenic opponents, including Marie Stopes, Margaret Sanger's English counterpart. Even the most casual reading of her Birth Control News makes it clear Stopes was not a champion of reproductive freedom. The full name of her organization was the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress.

As a feminist, Margaret Sanger did not even pioneer the idea that the solution to our social ills lies in curtailing the birthrates of the "unfit" women. Victoria Woodhull did that with a series of speeches across the U.S. in the 1870s, speeches I'm republishing in the soon-out Lady Eugenist: Feminist Eugenics in the Speeches and Writings of Victoria Woodhull. Merely listing the titles of two of her short books: The Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit (1891) and The Scientific Propagation of the Human Race (1893), makes her point of view clear. That's why a good case can be made that Woodhull--and not Francis Galton--pioneered eugenics as a movement both in the U.S. and the U.K, where she moved in in 1876. In what were perhaps her last public remarks,the New York Times described an interview in which she praised the 1927 Supreme Court decision legalizing forced sterilization, Buck v. Bell, and said she had "advocated that fifty years ago in my bookMarriage of the Unfit."

This history of bigotry, mostly focused on poor immigrants, does not mean that Sanger was the personification of evil. In her private correspondence she comes across as a loyal friend, even to people such as H. G. Wells, who snubbed her in one of his novels, and Havelock Ellis, who scarcely mentioned her in his autobiography. She was also, within her personal limitations, quite supportative of her much older second husband, including in the late 1930s, when he was considering evading prosecution for tax evasion by paying off someone in government. It'll be interesting to see if that correspondence finds its way into a later book in this series.

Even Sanger's negative eugenics does not appear to have come naturally to her. The daughter of a Catholic mother and an immigrant father, her early efforts on behalf of the poor appear to be as genuine as any such activity by an affluent 'parlor pink' can be. It was only on a visit to Glasgow's public housing projects that the Fabians taught her that a progressive welfare state had, of necessity, to reduce the birthrates of the poor to below the replacment level to avoid being swamped by a prolific poor. Glasgow did that by offering marvelous public housing to the poor with small families while cruelly consigning larger families to the horrors of the city's slum lords. Sanger first protested the policy, then agreed, and then returned to the U.S. to start a birth control movement with a similar agenda.

With all that in mind, I would recommend that readers, if they can't afford this rather pricey book, at least get their local library to purchase a copy. Like many of the more radical feminists, Sanger's variety of self-asserting individualism, which I call "heroic selfishness," was the first wave of what is now our much larger "culture war" between red states and blue states. (It's why the 25 states most generous in their personal charitable giving all went for Bush, a very revealing statistic.) To understand the real Sanger,turn to the biblical book of Esther and contemplate the fact that Sanger considered Vashti the real hero of the story and Esther, risking her life to save the Jewish people, a mere "washboard." I only hope the editors have the good sense to include those early remarks in some part of this book series. As Sanger herself hinted, it's a near perfect illustration of what motivated her and it's an attitude that comes through more clearly in the shrill pages of her The Woman Rebel than in her later writings.

And if you want to grasp just how interesting a study of Sanger can be, contemplate the fact that, almost alone on the radical left, in The Woman Rebel (July 1914) she praised some terrorists who intended to blow up the Manhattan home of John Rockefeller and yet a little over a decade later was exchanging polite little notes with members of the Rockefeller family. Politics does makefor strange bedfellows. The politics in that case was eugenics, the once-favorite cause of both the radical left and very wealthy. It's why today both are great fans of legalized abortion, particularly for the poor and minorities.

Soldier Nurse
As one always interested in the feminist movement, I rank "Margaret Sanger: Her Life in Her Words" as one of my favorite books. After reading this book, I truly understand who Margaret Sanger was, and why her work was so important to all women everywhere in the past and today more than ever. Sanger pioneered the availability of birth control for all women, giving women control over their lives, which is so counter to today's trends to eliminate birth control and abortion. Reed has written with great knowledge and perception of her subject and of the field of women's rights. Reed's writing draws the reading into a book that is difficult to put down. Highly recommended.

From the Publisher
This long-awaited collection of letters, diaries, articles and speeches, most of them never before published, were selected with an eye to telling the story of a remarkable life--a life consumed with the quest for women's sexual liberation. The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger (Volume 1) gives us, with dramatic immediacy, the first 28 years of Margaret Sanger's quest.

The birth control crusader, feminist, and reformer Margaret Sanger was one of the most controversial and compelling figures in the twentieth century. This first volume of The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger documents the critical phases and influences of an American feminist icon and offers rare glimpses into her working-class childhood, burgeoning feminism, spiritual and scientific interests, sexual explorations, and diverse roles as wife, mother, nurse, journalist, radical socialist, and activist.

These letters and other writings, including diaries, journals, articles, and speeches, most of which have never before been published, have been selected and assembled with an eye to telling the story of a remarkable life, punctuated by arrests and imprisonments, exile, love affairs, and a momentous personal loss--a life consumed with the quest for women's sexual liberation. Because its narrative line is so absorbing, volume 1 may be read as a powerful biography.

Volume 1 covers a twenty-eight-year period from nurse's training and early socialist involvement in pre- World War I bohemian Greenwich Village to Sanger's adoption of birth control (a term she helped coin in 1914) as a fundamental tenet of women's rights. It traces the intersection of her life and work with other reformers, activists and leaders of modernity on both sides of the Atlantic, including Havelock Ellis, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Emma Goldman, Max Eastman, and Eugene Debs, as well as many leading radical artists and writers of the day. It highlights her legislative and organizational efforts, her support of the eugenics movement, and the alliances she secured with medical professionals in her crusade to make birth control legal, respectable, and accessible. This volume also includes letters from women desperately in need of fertility control who saw Sanger as their last hope. Supplemented by an introduction, brief essays providing narrative and chronological links, and substantial notes, the volume is an invaluable tool for understanding Sanger's actions and accomplishments.

The documents assembled here, more than 80 percent of them letters, were culled from the Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm Edition, edited by Esther Katz, Cathy Moran Hajo, and Peter C. Engelman. Two subsequent volumes will address later periods in her life, and an additional volume will cover her international work in the birth control struggle.

Papers that make a powerful biography
This long-awaited collection of letters, diaries, articles and speeches, most of them never before published, were selected with an eye to telling the story of a remarkable life--a life consumed with the quest for women's sexual liberation. The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger (Volume 1) gives us, with dramatic immediacy, the first 28 years of Margaret Sanger's quest.

FROM THE JACKET
The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger
Vol. 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928
Edited by Esther Katz
Cathy Moran Hajo and Peter C. Engelman, Assistant Editors

The birth control crusader, feminist, and reformer Margaret Sanger was one of the most controversial and compelling figures in the twentieth century. This first volume of The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger documents the critical phases and influences of an American feminist icon and offers rare glimpses into her working-class childhood, burgeoning feminism, spiritual and scientific interests, sexual explorations, and diverse roles as wife, mother, nurse, journalist, radical socialist, and activist.

These letters and other writings, including diaries, journals, articles, and speeches, most of which have never before been published, have been selected and assembled with an eye to telling the story of a remarkable life, punctuated by arrests and imprisonments, exile, love affairs, and a momentous personal loss--a life consumed with the quest for women's sexual liberation. Because its narrative line is so absorbing, volume 1 may be read as a powerful biography.

Volume 1 covers a twenty-eight-year period from her nurse's training and early socialist involvement in pre- World War I bohemian Greenwich Village to her adoption of birth control (a term she helped coin in 1914) as a fundamental tenet of women's rights. It traces the intersection of her life and work with other reformers, activists and leaders of modernity on both sides of the Atlantic, including Havelock Ellis, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Emma Goldman, Max Eastman, and Eugene Debs, as well as many leading radical artists and writers of the day. It highlights her legislative and organizational efforts, her support of the eugenics movement, and the alliances she secured with medical professionals in her crusade to make birth control legal, respectable, and accessible. This volume also includes letters from women desperately in need of fertility control who saw Sanger as their last hope. Supplemented by an introduction, brief essays providing narrative and chronological links, and substantial notes, the volume is an invaluable tool for understanding Sanger's actions and accomplishments.

The documents assembled here, more than 80 percent of them letters, were culled from the Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm Edition, edited by Esther Katz, Cathy Moran Hajo, and Peter C. Engelman. Two subsequent volumes will address later periods in her life, and an additional volume will cover her international work in the birth control struggle.

"Mesmerizing letters from the days when birth control was legally obscene and jail sentences were regularly given out for talking about it in public. Nearly a century ago, Margaret Sanger was defending woman's 'ownership of her own body' and linking access to contraception to civil liberties and personal freedom. Rights we take for granted have a long and sometimes surprising history that comes clear on these pages. Required reading for our own time, whichever side of Roe v. Wade you are on."
-- Linda K. Kerber, author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship

"These wonderful letters, diary excerpts, and essays dramatize women's long struggle for respect, self-awareness, independence, influence, and control over our bodies and our lives. To contemplate Margaret Sanger's harsh reality and the enduring vision of this courageous pioneer--while the war against women escalates on every front--is a heartening and galvanizing act of rebellion. Esther Katz and her splendid team have given us all a very great gift."
-- Blanche Wiesen Cook, University Distinguished Professor, John Jay College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, and the author of Eleanor Roosevelt, volumes 1 and 2

"This engrossing volume, meticulously edited and selected, captures Margaret Sanger in all her complexity during a formative period in her long career. Open to practically any page, and something will grab your historical attention."
-- Susan Ware, editor of Notable American Women, volume 5 ... Read more