Caroline de Costa

By 1967, the United States was deeply mired in the war in Vietnam. In the immediate aftermath of World War II and until 1954, the Americans had supported French attempts to hold on to their colonial possessions in Indochina. When that failed, they opposed the creation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, led by the nationalist and communist Ho Chi Minh in the north of the country, and supported ... (read more)

As a gynaecologist and feminist, I figured that this book would have little new to teach me. By page four, I realised I was wrong. Kate Clancy, an anthropologist by training and a serious researcher into the science underlying menstruation, takes her readers on an adventurous romp through every physiological, political, and social aspect of this monthly bloodletting and tissue-shedding that virtua ... (read more)

As an abortion provider for more than forty years, and an advocate for abortion law reform and improved abortion services for more than fifty, I approached this book with alacrity. Around one hundred thousand abortions are performed in Australia every year, yet abortion is still not easily talked or written about. I felt that a non-fiction work of nearly three hundred pages on the topic, by a pers ... (read more)