The Humble Little Condom

The Humble Little Condom

Author: Aine Collier

Publisher: Prometheus Books

Published: 2010-05

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1615922326

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One of the most basic and ancient forms of birth control is the condom. The story of this humble piece of paraphernalia is full of intriguing insights into human character with all its flaws and foibles as well as many fascinating historical details.


Smuggler Nation

Smuggler Nation

Author: Peter Andreas

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2013-01-16

Total Pages: 471

ISBN-13: 0199301603

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America is a smuggler nation. Our long history of illicit imports has ranged from West Indies molasses and Dutch gunpowder in the 18th century, to British industrial technologies and African slaves in the 19th century, to French condoms and Canadian booze in the early 20th century, to Mexican workers and Colombian cocaine in the modern era. Contraband capitalism, it turns out, has been an integral part of American capitalism. Providing a sweeping narrative history from colonial times to the present, Smuggler Nation is the first book to retell the story of America--and of its engagement with its neighbors and the rest of the world--as a series of highly contentious battles over clandestine commerce. As Peter Andreas demonstrates in this provocative and fascinating account, smuggling has played a pivotal and too often overlooked role in America's birth, westward expansion, and economic development, while anti-smuggling campaigns have dramatically enhanced the federal government's policing powers. The great irony, Andreas tells us, is that a country that was born and grew up through smuggling is today the world's leading anti-smuggling crusader. In tracing America's long and often tortuous relationship with the murky underworld of smuggling, Andreas provides a much-needed antidote to today's hyperbolic depictions of out-of-control borders and growing global crime threats. Urgent calls by politicians and pundits to regain control of the nation's borders suffer from a severe case of historical amnesia, nostalgically implying that they were ever actually under control. This is pure mythology, says Andreas. For better and for worse, America's borders have always been highly porous. Far from being a new and unprecedented danger to America, the illicit underside of globalization is actually an old American tradition. As Andreas shows, it goes back not just decades but centuries. And its impact has been decidedly double-edged, not only subverting U.S. laws but also helping to fuel America's evolution from a remote British colony to the world's pre-eminent superpower.


A Book about the Film Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

A Book about the Film Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

Author: Darl Larsen

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-06-29

Total Pages: 445

ISBN-13: 1538115972

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This reference identifies and explains the cultural, historical, and topical allusions in the filmMonty Python’s Meaning of Life, the Pythons’ third and final original feature as a complete group. In this resource, virtually every allusion and reference that appears in the film is identified and explained —from Britain’s waning Empire through the Winter of Discontent to Margaret Thatcher’s second-term mandate, from playing fields to battle fields, and from accountant pirates to sacred sperm. Organized chronologically by scene, the entries cover literary and metaphoric allusions, symbolisms, names, peoples, and places; as well as the many social, cultural, and historical elements that populate this film, and the Pythons’ work in general.


Protective Practices

Protective Practices

Author: Jessica Borge

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2020-09-23

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0228004268

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From humble beginnings wholesaling at a small tobacconist-hairdresser shop in 1915, the London Rubber Company rapidly became the UK's biggest postwar producer and exporter of disposable rubber condoms. A first-mover and innovator, the company's continuous product development and strong brands (including Durex) allowed it to dominate supply to the retail trade and family planning clinics, leading it to intercede in the burgeoning women's market. When oral contraceptives came along, however, the company was caught in a bind between defending condoms against the pill and claiming a segment of the new birth control market for itself. In this first major study on the company, Jessica Borge shows how, despite the "unmentionable" status of condoms that inhibited advertising in the early twentieth century, aggressive business practices were successfully deployed to protect the monopoly and squash competition. Through close, evidence-based examination of LRC's first fifty years, encompassing its most challenging decades, the 1950s and 1960s, as well as an overview of later years including the AIDS crisis, Borge argues that the story of the modern disposable condom in Britain is really the story of the London Rubber Company, the circumstances that befell it, the struggles that beset it, the causes that opposed it, and the opportunities it created for itself. LRC's historic intervention in and contribution to female contraceptive practices sits uneasily with existing narratives centred on women's control of reproduction, but the time has come, Borge argues, for the condom to find its way back to the centre of these debates. Protective Practices thereby re-examines a key transitional moment in social and cultural history through the lens of this unusual case study.


Abortion and Contraception in Modern Greece, 1830-1967

Abortion and Contraception in Modern Greece, 1830-1967

Author: Violetta Hionidou

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-05-15

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 3030414906

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The book examines the history of abortion and contraception in Modern Greece from the time of its creation in the 1830s to 1967, soon after the Pill became available. It situates the history of abortion and contraception within the historiography of the fertility decline and the question of whether the decline was due to adjustment to changing social conditions or innovation of contraceptive methods. The study reveals that all methods had been in use for other purposes before they were employed as contraceptives. For example, Greek women were employing emmenagogues well before fertility was controlled; they did so in order to ‘put themselves right’ and to enhance their fertility. When they needed to control their fertility, they employed abortifacients, some of which were also emmenagogues, while others had been used as expellants in earlier times. Curettage was also employed since the late nineteenth century as a cure for sterility; once couples desired to control their fertility curettage was employed to procure abortion. Thus couples did not need to innovate but rather had to repurpose old methods and materials to new birth control methods. Furthermore, the role of physicians was found to have been central in advising and encouraging the use of birth control for ‘health’ reasons, thus facilitating and speeding fertility decline in Greece. All this occurred against the backdrop of a state and a church that were at times neutral and at other times disapproving of fertility control.


Have a Little Faith in Me

Have a Little Faith in Me

Author: Sonia Hartl

Publisher: Page Street YA

Published: 2019-09-03

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 1624147984

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"Saved!" meets To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before in this laugh-out-loud romantic comedy that takes a meaningful look at consent and what it means to give it. When CeCe’s born-again ex-boyfriend dumps her after they have sex, she follows him to Jesus camp in order to win him back. Problem: She knows nothing about Jesus. But her best friend Paul does. He accompanies CeCe to camp, and the plan—God’s or CeCe’s—goes immediately awry when her ex shows up with a new girlfriend, a True Believer at that. Scrambling to save face, CeCe ropes Paul into faking a relationship. But as deceptions stack up, she questions whether her ex is really the nice guy he seemed. And what about her strange new feelings for Paul—is this love, lust, or an illusion born of heartbreak? To figure it out, she’ll have to confront the reasons she chased her ex to camp in the first place, including the truth about the night she lost her virginity.


Medical Firsts

Medical Firsts

Author: Tish Davidson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2023-06-15

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1440877343

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Profiling 60 medical innovations and milestones from the 11th through 21st centuries, this book highlights the people and stories behind these key moments while also exploring their historical context and enduring legacy. Medical Firsts: Innovations and Milestones That Changed the World brings together a carefully curated collection of turning points in the history of medicine over the last millennium. These firsts are drawn from a wide array of medical fields, from surgery to genetics, dentistry, and psychiatry. Firsts are arranged chronologically, but a thematic listing has also been included to allow readers to focus in on particular subject areas, such as trailblazing individuals, groundbreaking drugs and treatments, pioneering diagnostic tools, and life-saving medical procedures. Each entry begins with a description of how the first came to be, followed by discussion of the historical context in which it emerged and its continued impact on the world of medicine. Sources for further information are provided at the end of each entry and serve as a gateway to further study. We take many modern medical devices and techniques for granted, but everything from hypodermic needles and baby incubators to organ transplants, antibiotics, and hearing aids began simply as ideas in someone's mind. And while such concepts as formal medical education, methodical clinical trials, and universal healthcare may seem commonplace today, this wasn't always the case. In some cases, milestones centered around key people and institutions rather than technologies or ideas. Do you know who the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was, or where the oldest medical school still in existence resides? Medical history comes to life in this captivating volume.


50 Great Myths of Human Sexuality

50 Great Myths of Human Sexuality

Author: Pepper Schwartz

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2015-04-20

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0470674334

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50 Great Myths of Human Sexuality seeks to dispel commonly accepted myths and misunderstandings surrounding human sexuality, providing an enlightening, fascinating and challenging book that covers the fifty areas the author’s believe individuals must understand to have a safe, pleasurable and healthy sex life. Dispels/Explores commonly accepted myths and misunderstandings surrounding human sexuality Includes comparisons to other countries and cultures exploring different beliefs and how societies can influence perceptions Areas discussed include: pre-marital sex, masturbation, sexual diseases, fantasy, pornography, relationships, contraception, and emotions such as jealousy, body image insecurity, passionate love and sexual aggression Covers both heterosexual and same-sex relationships


Touch, Sexuality, and Hands in British Literature, 1740–1901

Touch, Sexuality, and Hands in British Literature, 1740–1901

Author: Kimberly Cox

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-09-05

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1000431991

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From Robert Lovelace’s uninvited hand-grasps in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa to to Basil Hallward’s first encounter with Dorian Gray, literary depictions of touching hands in British literature from the 1740s to the 1890s communicate emotional dimensions of sexual experience that reflect shifting cultural norms associated with gender roles, sexuality​, and sexual expression. But what is the relationship between hands, tactility, and sexuality in Victorian literature? And how do we best interpret ​what those touches communicate between characters? This volume addresses these questions by asserting a connection between the prevalence of violent, sexually charged touches in eighteenth-century novels such as those by Eliza Haywood, Samuel Richardson, and Frances Burney and growing public concern over handshake etiquette in the nineteenth century evident in works by ​Jane Austen, the Brontës, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, and Flora Annie Steel. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach that combines literary analysis with close analyses of paintings, musical compositions, and nonfictional texts​, such as etiquette books and scientific treatises​, to make a case for the significance of tactility to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century perceptions of selfhood and sexuality. In doing so, it draws attention to the communicative nature of skin-to-skin contact ​as represented in literature and traces a trajectory of meaning from the forceful grips that violate female characters in eighteenth-century novels to the consensual embraces common in Victorian ​and neo-Victorian literature.


Humble Masterpieces

Humble Masterpieces

Author: Paola Antonelli

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2005-11-29

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 0060838310

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From M & Ms to Post–It Notes, a charming and insightful collection of design marvels from everyday life, celebrated by the curator of the MoMA's department of architecture and design. Every day we use dozens of tiny objects, from Post–It notes to Band–Aids. If they work well, chances are we do not pay them much attention. But although modest in size and price, some of these objects are true masterpieces of the art of design. Paola Antonelli, curator of the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Design and Architecture, is a highly celebrated figure in the world of design (she was just ranked among the top 100 most powerful people in the world of art). Paola has long been passionate about the subject of everyday objects that are marvels of design. The response to her recent MoMA show, also called Humble Masterpieces, was electric. In addition to lively coverage in dozens of publications, the museum goers spread the word about the fun of learning about and nominating their own picks for humble masterpieces. Now, in this colorful visual feast, Antonelli chooses 100 fabulous objects, from Chupa Chup lollipops to Legos to Chopsticks and Scotch tape. Each object will be portrayed with a gorgeous close–up detail, a brisk and informative text on its origin and special design features, as well as a silhouette image of the object as we see it each day. Certain to appeal to a broad audience, and to lend itself to fun, creative promotional opportunities, Humble Masterpieces will celebrate the possibility of looking at our everyday lives in an all–new way.