The Secret History of Sex.

The article provides information on the book "Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America," by Andrea Tone. Once in a while readers come across a book that is so original, so persuasive, so meticulously researched and documented that it overrides some of their most taken-for-granted assumptions and beliefs. Devices and Desires opens in 1873 when, through the machinations of Anthony Comstock-star agent for the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice -Congress unexpectedly voted to make contraceptives illegal. It may be that talk of the new law made contraception known to some folks who had never heard of it before.