Excerpt from The Birth of the Pill by Jonathan Eig, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Pincus and Hoagland did their best to make the old ladies' home look like a hall of science. They converted the sun porch to a library. Bedrooms became laboratories. One bedroom-turned-laboratory became a bedroom again when Chang arrived from China by way of Scotland and England to work with Pincus. Though Chang spoke little English, Pincus had spotted something in the scientist, enticing him to join the Foundation for the paltry salary of $2,000 a year (or about $26,000 by today's standards). Chang, who knew Pincus by reputation, thought he would be working in one of America's prestigious institutes and that his fellowship would include free lodging, perhaps on campus, or at least nearby. He did get free lodging, but his room was at the YMCA. He and Pincus would travel to and from work by bus. Later, he would move to the Foundation, sleeping on a small bed in the corner of a converted laboratory and using Bunsen burners to heat his meager meals. As a strict Confucian, Chang didn't mind. He reported proudly that for one important experiment in 1947 he had stored fertilized rabbit eggs in his kitchen refrigerator. Pincus told Chang that he had spoken to Margaret Sanger about her desire for a pill to prevent pregnancy. It had to be a pill, he explained, not an injection, jelly, liquid, or foam, and not a mechanical device used in the vagina. When Pincus talked in this way—with a sense of purpose, hands chopping at the air, his eyes glittering beneath those bushy brows—his colleagues paid attention.

Goody Pincus was not one of those soft-spoken geniuses content to let his work speak for itself. He was a powerfully built man with a lean, muscular frame. Though his suits and ties were invariably cheap and occasionally mismatched, he nevertheless carried himself with aristocratic self-possession. His voice was stentorian. Confidence was one of his strongest tools. He understood something many scientists did not: that scientific exploration and experimentation were only parts of the job; another equally important part was selling. An idea, no matter how good, might easily die if it were not aggressively pitched—to other scientists, to backers with deep pockets, and, ultimately, to the public. It was the selling that had helped sink him at Harvard, but Pincus was undeterred. He knew from the start that it would be one thing to build a birth-control pill and another to persuade the world to accept it. The scientist attempting such a task would have to be prepared to do both, or there would be little point trying.

Pincus and Chang discussed a scientific paper from 1937—"The Effect of Progesterin and Progesterone on Ovulation in the Rabbit," by A. W. Makepeace, G. L. Weinstein, and M. H. Friedman of the University of Pennsylvania. It reported that injections of the hormone progesterone prevented ovulation in rabbits. Though it had been a huge discovery at the time, no one had tried to explore the implications for humans. There were many reasons. For one thing, scientists weren't seeking innovations in contraception. There was neither prestige nor money in the work, only risk. And even if they had tried, progesterone was too expensive at that time to be widely used.

But when Pincus met Sanger and listened to her plea, attitudes on birth control were shifting—at least a little. Perhaps more important, however, was the evolution then taking place in the field of biology. Scientists were beginning to understand the inner workings of the body well enough to tinker with them. Before the 1950s drugs were mostly developed with the "suck-and-see" approach, as the British referred to trial-and-error experiments. A scientist would concoct a formula in a lab, gulp it down like Dr. Jekyll, and see what effects it had. But those days were nearing an end. Pincus and Chang knew how progesterone functioned. Now the task was to see if they could produce it, modify it, and put it to use. Fortunately, new technology was making progesterone less expensive to obtain. If Sanger would pay for it, Pincus thought he had a good idea of how to proceed.

Excerpted from Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig. Copyright © 2014 by Jonathan Eig. With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.