As Nature Made Him

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “We should aspire to Colapinto's stellar journalist example: listening carefully to the circumstances of those who are different rather than demanding that they conform to our own.” —Washington Post The true story about the "twins case" and a riveting exploration of medical arrogance, misguided science, societal confusion, gender differences, and one man's ultimate triumph In 1967, after a twin baby boy suffered a botched circumcision, his family agreed to a radical treatment that would alter his gender. The case would become one of the most famous in modern medicine—and a total failure. The boy's uninjured brother, raised as a boy, provided to the experiment the perfect matched control. As Nature Made Him tells the extraordinary story of David Reimer, who, when finally informed of his medical history, made the decision to live as a male. Writing with uncommon intelligence, insight, and compassion, John Colapinto sets the historical and medical context for the case, exposing the thirty-year-long scientific feud between Dr. John Money and his fellow sex researcher, Dr. Milton Diamond—a rivalry over the nature/nurture debate whose very bitterness finally brought the truth to light. A macabre tale of medical arrogance, it is first and foremost a human drama of one man's—and one family's—amazing survival in the face of terrible odds.

In 1967, after a twin baby boy suffered a botched circumcision, his family agreed to a radical treatment that would alter his gender. The case would become one of the most famous in modern medicine -- and a total failure. As Nature Made Him tells the extraordinary story of David Reimer, who, when finally informed of his medical history, made the decision to live as a male. A macabre tale of medical arrogance, it is first and foremost a human drama of one man's -- and one family's -- amazing survival in the face of terrible odds.

In 1967, after a baby boy suffered a botched circumcision, his desperate family agreed to a radical treatment. On the advice of an expert, the boy was surgically altered to live life as a girl. This is story of his life.

From the author of the New York Times bestseller As Nature Made Him comes a “clever and entertaining first novel.”—Elle Despite a severe case of writer's block, Cal Cunningham dreams of writing a novel that will permit him to escape from his life as a penniless stockboy in dirty and dangerous upper Manhattan bookstore. However, when his roommate is suddenly killed in a bicycle accident, Cal is suddenly the author of a page-turning autobiography. Propelled to the top of the bestseller lists with million-dollar movie deals, Cal finds that he has realized his most outlandish fantasies of literary success. That is, until he discovers that someone knows his secret. A searingly funny psychological thriller, About the Author delves into the excesses of the publishing world and shows that sometimes the difference between reality and imagination can be fatal.

A controversial figure, innovative scholar, and ardent advocate for sexual liberation, sexologist John Money opened a new field of research in sexual science and gave currency to medical ideas about human sexuality. This book offers, for the first time, a balanced and probing textual analysis of this pioneering scholar’s writing to assess Money’s profound impact on the debates and research on sexuality and gender that dominated the last half of the twentieth century. The author recovers Money’s brilliance and insight from simplistic dismissals of his work due to his involvement in the tragic David Reimer case, while never losing sight of his flaws.

Introduction: Personally speaking -- Baby talk -- Origins -- Emotion -- Language -- Sex and gender -- The voice in society -- The voice of leadership & persuasion -- Swan song.

Exposes the lies and misconceptions about sex education taught to American children in school, including information on sexually transmitted diseases, contraception, and homosexuality.

Now updated with groundbreaking research, this award-winning classic examines the construction of sexual identity in biology, society, and history. Why do some people prefer heterosexual love while others fancy the same sex? Is sexual identity biologically determined or a product of convention? In this brilliant and provocative book, the acclaimed author of Myths of Gender argues that even the most fundamental knowledge about sex is shaped by the culture in which scientific knowledge is produced. Drawing on astonishing real-life cases and a probing analysis of centuries of scientific research, Fausto-Sterling demonstrates how scientists have historically politicized the body. In lively and impassioned prose, she breaks down three key dualisms -- sex/gender, nature/nurture, and real/constructed -- and asserts that individuals born as mixtures of male and female exist as one of five natural human variants and, as such, should not be forced to compromise their differences to fit a flawed societal definition of normality.