Our Bodies Our Selves

If you are a woman of a certain age and your family of a certain social/political persuasion, at some point your mother or your most awesome aunt might have given you a copy of Our Bodies Our Selves. By the 1980s it was a huge book with hundreds of pages covering all aspects of women's health and sexuality, but it started out as a pretty humble, stapled mimeograph in 1971.

We recently received a generous gift of the eighth printing from July 1972, priced at only 35 cents. The printing history on the inside cover reveals a lot:

1st printing December 1970 5,000
2nd printing April 1971 15,000
3rd printing September 1971 20,000
4th printing December 1971 25,000
5th printing March 1972 25,000
6th printing May 1972 25,000
7th printing July 1972 10,000
8th printing July 1972 25,000 

That's incredible. A book printed by the Boston Women's Health Collective, with no real advertising or marketing plan ran through four printings in less than six months and sold 150,000 copies in its first year and a half. Clearly there was a need for some honest information about reproductive health and sexuality that included things not talked about (hell, not even acknowledged to exist) in many circles. This is not your grandmother's gynecologist.

To see it ask for Rare RA778 .B69 1971.