A Darker Ribbon: A Twentieth-Century Story of Breast Cancer, Women, and Their Doctors

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

A poignant, insightful, thinking woman's guide to breast cancer experience - "A remarkable social history of breast cancer and the struggle to participated in the decisions affecting its incidence and treatments - a clarion call for women to sustain and defend our health as actively as the realities of our lives permit." - Ruth Hubbard, author of core bestseller Exploding the Gene Myth - An invaluable and inspirational women's health history - includes correspondence between Rachel Carson, the 20th century's most famous breast cancer patient, and her personal physician - A startling look at the power politics of the doctor/patient relationship

Reviews

I would recommend [this book] to anyone . . . as a truly engaged social history of a curious, melancholy, and, until now, untold chapter in medical history. -Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Globe

"Why did it take most of the twentieth century for breast cancer to move from being viewed as a disease that affected women to a woman's disease How do we explain the stubborn reluctance of American women to understand breast cancer as a feminist issue Leopold's answers to these questions, along with her skillful attempt to fill a historiographical void in the breast cancer literature, make for engaging reading." -Regina Morantz-Sanchez, The Women's Review of Books

"The apposition of Barbara Mueller's interaction with Halsted and Rachel Carson's with Crile is compelling and poignant." -Jerome Groopman, The New York Times Book Review

"A Darker Ribbon is an invaluable tool and a powerful call to arms."
-National Women's Review

"A path-breaking inquiry into the sociopolitical history of cancer writ large. . . . Read the book as a story about how the cancer establishment got the active support of the American population, and you've got a new window on twentieth-century medical history." -Deborah Stone, The American Prospect

Author Bio

Ellen Leopold is a member of the Women's Community Cancer Project in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has written breast cancer and women's health-care articles for The Nation, the Chicago Tribune, and the Boston Globe, among others.