Recounts the history of the birth control pill, from its approval in 1960 to the various beliefs that the drug would ensure happy marriages and eradicate poverty, and covers what the prescription became for women and the liberation it brought.

"Saidiya Hartman examines the revolution of black intimate life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. Free love, common-law and transient marriages, serial partners, cohabitation outside of wedlock, queer relations, and single motherhood were among the sweeping changes that altered the character of everyday life and challenged traditional Victorian beliefs about courtship, love, and marriage. Hartman...