Pg. 99: Matthew Connelly's "Fatal Misconception"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Matthew Connelly's Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population.

About the book, from the publisher:

Fatal Misconception is the disturbing story of our quest to remake humanity by policing national borders and breeding better people. As the population of the world doubled once, and then again, well-meaning people concluded that only population control could preserve the "quality of life." This movement eventually spanned the globe and carried out a series of astonishing experiments, from banning Asian immigration to paying poor people to be sterilized.

Supported by affluent countries, foundations, and non-governmental organizations, the population control movement experimented with ways to limit population growth. But it had to contend with the Catholic Church's ban on contraception and nationalist leaders who warned of "race suicide." The ensuing struggle caused untold suffering for those caught in the middle--particularly women and children. It culminated in the horrors of sterilization camps in India and the one-child policy in China.

Matthew Connelly offers the first global history of a movement that changed how people regard their children and ultimately the face of humankind. It was the most ambitious social engineering project of the twentieth century, one that continues to alarm the global community. Though promoted as a way to lift people out of poverty--perhaps even to save the earth--family planning became a means to plan other people's families.

With its transnational scope and exhaustive research into such archives as Planned Parenthood and the newly opened Vatican Secret Archives, Connelly's withering critique uncovers the cost inflicted by a humanitarian movement gone terribly awry and urges renewed commitment to the reproductive rights of all people.

Among the early acclaim for the book:

"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."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"This is history written from the heart. The story it tells is of misplaced benevolence at best and biological totalitarianism at worst. Deeply researched and elegantly written, it is a disturbing, angry, combative, and important book, one which raises issues we ignore at our peril."
--Jay Winter, Yale University

"Matthew Connelly bravely and eloquently explores the dark underside of world population policies. It is a clarion call to respect individuals' freedom to make their own reproductive choices."
--William Easterly, author of The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good

"One of the most gifted historians of his generation has given us an exciting and thought-provoking new way to understand the making of the ever-globalizing world of today."
--Akira Iriye, author of Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World

"Connelly raises the most profound political, social, and moral questions. His history reveals that the difference between population control and birth control is indeed that between coercion and choice."
--Mahmood Mamdani, author of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror

Read an excerpt from Fatal Misconception and learn more about the book at the Harvard University Press website.

Matthew Connelly is an associate professor of history at Columbia University. His other publications include A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (2002) and research articles in Comparative Studies in Society and History, The International Journal of Middle East Studies, The American Historical Review, The Review française d’histoire d’Outre-mer, and Past & Present. He has also published commentary on international affairs in The Atlantic Monthly and The National Interest.

Visit Matthew Connelly's website.

The Page 99 Test: Fatal Misconception.

--Marshal Zeringue