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A Chicago Tribune 'Best Books of 2014' A Washington Post '50 Notable Works of Nonfiction & Best Science Books 2014' A Chicago Tribune 'Nonfiction Books to Gift 2014' A Slate 'Best Books 2014: Staff Picks' A Booklist '2014 Editor's Choice' & 'Top 10 Science and Health Books of 2014' A St. Louis Post-Dispatch 'Best Books of 2014: Nonfiction' The fascinating story of one of the most important scientific discoveries of the twentieth century.We know it simply as "the pill," yet its genesis was anything but simple. Jonathan Eig's masterful narrative revolves around four principal characters: the fiery feminist Margaret Sanger, who was a champion of birth control in her campaign for the rights of women but neglected her own children in pursuit of free love; the beautiful Katharine McCormick, who owed her fortune to her wealthy husband, the son of the founder of International Harvester and a schizophrenic; the visionary scientist Gregory Pincus, who was dismissed by Harvard in the 1930s as a result of his experimentation with in vitro fertilization but who, after he was approached by Sanger and McCormick, grew obsessed with the idea of inventing a drug that could stop ovulation; and the telegenic John Rock, a Catholic doctor from Boston who battled his own church to become an enormously effective advocate in the effort to win public approval for the drug that would be marketed by Searle as Enovid.