The Birth of the Pill by Jonathan Eig

This book is an incredibly well written history of how the modern birth control pill came to exist.  Eig sets this history up as a story with four main characters and explores each of their unique motivations and contributions to making this happen.  The first cast member is Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, who devoted her life to liberating sex.  She started off the driving passion by getting the scientist Goody Pincus, who was intent on changing the world, to work on it.  Then Sanger looped in a wealthy woman named Katherine McCormick to help fund it.  McCormick had devoted a great deal of her life to women's liberation and came to believe that the key was controlling pregnancy.  If women had all of their legal rights and education, she felt it amounted to little if they were going to be endlessly pregnant.  As Pincus worked on his research he brought in a catholic gynecologist named Dr. Rock.  Rock's belief in the cause came from working with women who were troubled by having far more children than their bodies, minds, and pocketbooks could manage.  He argued with his church that this was something for a married couple to decide for themselves.

Eig makes all of these characters vivid and expertly weaves together the narrative of trying to find the right chemicals, testing it, getting it past the FDA, and eventually marketing it.  The book is littered with interesting tidbits.  When they initially brought the pill to the FDA, to avoid controversy, they said it was to help with irregular menstrual cycles and avoiding pregnancy was a side effect.  The book also reflects on how life was for women before pregnancy became a choice.  It's witty and generally a great read.

Power Concedes Nothing by Connie Rice

This is one of the most potent books I have ever read.  Connie Rice has devoted her life to trying to improve social justice in America and her passion and stories are exhilarating.  The book is a memoir of a civil rights' attorney, but a good portion of the time it reads like a mix between an action thriller and Chicken Soup for the Soul- which is to say it is page turning and made me tear up repeatedly

Connie Rice's life is defined by action.  She worked as a civil rights' attorney winning important cases with the intent of protecting the poorest and most over looked in society.  When the Rodney King riots started, she felt like her lawsuits weren't doing enough to effect change so she went to the poorest, most violent gang-ridden projects and asked them what she could do to help.  First, she met with a bunch of women and the women told her to help the men- who at that moment were working on a gang truce.  So right then, she walked herself over to a meeting between the Bloods and the Crips and asked how she could help.  That level of fearlessness and unwavering resolve are constant in her stories and make this woman a hero.

Rice worked with people on the street for years doing what she could via the court and in-person, but she also started to form relationships with the police.  She notes that in one neighborhood, there were around 8,000 unsolved murders over 20 years.  And in that type of environment, there is no concept of rule of law or expectation of safety.  Dropout, unemployment, and literacy rates were all over 50%.  Boys grew up with the expectation that they'd die young in gang violence or that they'd end up in prison.  In one heart breaking story, she went to the hospital bed of a kid she'd come to care about who'd been shot.  She asked him to name a real job he's ever wanted and she'll make it happen for him.  The greatest aspiration this kid could come up with was to "work the machine with the pictures", or the cash register, at McDonalds.  These neighborhoods dispel the idea of equality of opportunity in America

Over time, Rice started developing friendships with select police officers who seemed intent on doing good.  She found that the attitude was of containment of the bad areas.  That police viewed their job as making sure the bad gangs and violence stayed in the bad areas- not as actually trying to protect people in the bad areas.  Rice wanted police who saw themselves as protectors of the community- even in the bad areas.  And her constant action and sincerity slowly won over several influential police officers.  She went from suing the LAPD to being one of the LAPD's last two chiefs' top advisers.  She headed a commission on how to reverse gang violence and found a lot of concrete solutions that when the chiefs' put in place, have helped in drastically lowering violence rates.  She became such an expert that top generals in Afghanistan asked her for advice because they felt that LA's gangs were a lot like the insurgents with whom they dealt.

This woman's energy level is amazing.  She has done more good in her life than the vast majority and she feels it's not enough.  She has so much compassion and empathy that when you read about the stories of gang members and people on the streets that she met, you feel you understand them and that your help is needed.  She constantly holds the reader to task for needing to see the poorest of the poor as their problem- not something we can overlook so long as their plight is far removed for our daily sight.  Rice frequently quotes Martin Luther King Jr. and calls for the "Fierce Urgency of Now".  And Rice effectively sells her message with countless stories of hope.  She shares stories of prisoners and prison guards moving from bitter enemies to seeing each other as human and embracing each other.  She tells of a terrible neighborhood that went from seeing cops as the enemy to having gang members protect a cop's family after he was threatened.  She tells of gang members turning their lives around and relentlessly doing everything they can to help the next generation of neighborhood kids have something better than they did.

This book is testament to building hope amidst despair.  It is a call to action to remind us that we not only can tackle the worst problems in our culture but that we have a moral obligation to do so.