Review Attention

"This is the best book on population this reviewer has read in several years, one that every demographer, population economist, public health official, congressional staffer, private foundation executive, religious leader, and concerned citizen should read. The book...compellingly integrates its subject into a huge, panoramic struggle over basic human freedoms, the shape of families and societies, and the future of the planet itself. Summing up: Essential." —Choice

"...the publication of Matthew Connelly's book is not just perfectly timed: it is essential. The assistant professor of history at Columbia University has delivered a devastating account of the population-control movement; he demonstrates, detail by shocking detail, how a movement that believed it was acting from the highest humanitarian ideals became responsible for callous abuses of human rights on a global scale, ruining millions of lives in a grotesque eugenic experiment."—The Times of London

"Connelly lays bare the dark secrets of an authoritarian neo-Malthusian ethos that created an international population agenda built around control...He describes the official policies that made it acceptable to hand out food aid to famine victims only if the women agreed to be sterilised. And he shows how this thinking culminated in the horrors of forced sterilisation in India in the 1970s and inspired the Chinese to set up their one-child policy... as an investigative narrative of how individuals, NGOs, governments and UN agencies colluded over decades to sideline the human rights of hundreds of millions of the world's poorest citizens, this is a valuable and extremely readable work."—New Scientist

"When I mentioned to friends who work in the family planning field that I was reviewing these books, nearly all of them expressed anger at Connelly in particular, for "dredging up" this history and for failing to emphasize the positive aspects of the population movement… But Connelly and Maternowska also have a point, which is not only about the unintended harm caused by well-intentioned but poorly run development programs. The mistakes those programs made — and not Connelly or Maternowska, who merely report them—provided fuel for the religious right, and these books, though painful to read, contain many valuable lessons for anyone who cares about making development programs work, both technically and politically."—The New York Review of Books

"Fatal Misconception is the result of an awesomely sustained research effort…the book is eminently readable and informative."— Science

"This is a truly extraordinary book that I cannot recommend too highly, not just to the small community of historians working in the area of health and population, but for public health workers, demographers, scholars in gender studies, feminist and health activists and, indeed, even the occasional policymaker who reads."— Economic & Political Weekly

"Mr Connelly's most devastating critique of population control is not that it destroyed lives, or was based on imperialist or eugenic ideas, but that it did not work. In country after country—even in China—birth rates were already falling when the government began implementing more coercive policies."—The Economist

"[A] disturbing and compelling global history of population control programs...Drawing from records in more than 50 archives in seven countries, including those from Planned Parenthood and the more recently opened Vatican Secret Archives, Connelly provides extensive examples of movements to adjust populations...The world population growth is slowing and the age of population control appears to be over for the moment, but Connelly writes that his book is not just about history: It is a cautionary tale about the future."—Christian Science Monitor

"Passionate and troubling...Connelly tells the story of the 20th-century international movement to control population, which he sees as an oppressive movement that failed to deliver the promised economic and environmental results...Ambitious, exhaustively researched and clearly written, this is a highly important book."—Publisher's Weekly starred review