
The Icon and the Idealist
Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America
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Narrated by:
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Janina Edwards
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By:
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Stephanie Gorton
About this listen
A riveting history about the little-known rivalry between Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett that profoundly shaped reproductive rights in America
In the 1910s, as the birth control movement was born, two leaders emerged: Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett. While Sanger would go on to found Planned Parenthood, Dennett’s name has largely faded from public knowledge. Each held a radically different vision for what reproductive autonomy and birth control access should look like in America.
Few are aware of the fierce personal and political rivalry that played out between Sanger and Dennett over decades—a battle that had a profound impact on the lives of American women. Meticulously researched and vividly drawn, The Icon and the Idealist reveals how and why these two women came to activism, the origins of the clash between them, and the ways in which their missteps and breakthroughs have reverberated across American society for generations.
With deep archival scope and rigorous execution, Stephanie Gorton weaves together a personal narrative of two fascinating women and the political history of a country rocked by changing social norms, the Depression, and a fervor for eugenics. Refusing to shy away from the enmeshed struggles of race, class, and gender, Gorton has made a sweeping examination of every force that has come in the way of women’s reproductive freedom.
Brimming with insight and compelling portraits of women’s struggles throughout the twentieth century, The Icon and the Idealist is a comprehensive history of a radical cultural movement.
©2024 Stephanie Gorton (P)2024 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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You either were there or you wanted to be. A defining New York City institution co-founded by Norman Mailer, The Village Voice was the first newspaper to cover hip-hop, the avant-garde art scene, and Off-Broadway with gravitas. It reported on the AIDS crisis with urgency and seriousness when other papers dismissed it as a gay disease. In 1979, the Voice’s Wayne Barrett uncovered Donald Trump as a corrupt con artist before anyone else was paying attention.
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Excellent content and structure, but …
- By richard s. burker on 03-16-24
By: Tricia Romano
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The Rest Is Memory
- By: Lily Tuck
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 2 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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First glimpsed riding on the back of a boy’s motorcycle, fourteen-year-old Czeslawa comes to life in this mesmerizing novel by Lily Tuck, who imagines her upbringing in a small Polish village before her world imploded in late 1942. Stripped of her modest belongings, shorn, and tattooed number 26947 on arriving at Auschwitz, Czeslawa is then photographed. Three months later, she is dead. How did this happen to an ordinary Polish citizen? This is the question that Tuck grapples with in this haunting novel.
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heartbreaking
- By Amazon Customer on 02-12-25
By: Lily Tuck
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Agent Zo
- The Untold Story of a Fearless World War II Resistance Fighter
- By: Clare Mulley
- Narrated by: Kristin Atherton, Clare Mulley
- Length: 13 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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During World War II, Elzbieta Zawacka—the WWII female resistance fighter known as Agent Zo—was the only woman to reach London as an emissary of the Polish Home Army command. In Britain, she became the only woman to join the Polish elite Special Forces, known as the "Silent Unseen." She was secretly trained in the British countryside, and then she was the only female member of these forces to be parachuted back behind enemy lines to Nazi-occupied Poland.
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Agent Zo
- By Cam on 03-05-25
By: Clare Mulley
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Kent State
- An American Tragedy
- By: Brian VanDeMark
- Narrated by: Daniel Henning
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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On May 4, 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, political fires that had been burning across America during the 1960s exploded. Antiwar protesters wearing bell-bottom jeans hurled taunts and rocks at another group of young Americans—National Guardsmen sporting gas masks and rifles. At half past noon, violence unfolded with chaotic speed, as guardsmen—many of whom had joined the Guard to escape the draft—opened fire on the students. Kent State meticulously re-creates the divided cultural landscape of America during the Vietnam War and popular anxieties around the country.
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Disappointed
- By Elwood Sulzer on 09-21-24
By: Brian VanDeMark
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Secret Daughter
- A Mixed-Race Daughter and the Mother Who Gave Her Away
- By: June Cross
- Narrated by: LaQuita James
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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June Cross was born in 1954 to Norma Booth, a glamorous, aspiring White actress, and James "Stump" Cross, a well-known Black comedian. Sent by her mother to be raised by Black friends when she was four years old and could no longer pass as White, June was plunged into the pain and confusion of a family divided by race. Secret Daughter tells her story of survival. It traces June's astonishing discoveries about her mother and about her own fierce determination to thrive.
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So much wanted this . . .
- By JPALJ on 10-25-22
By: June Cross
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Human Sacrifice
- A Shocking Exposé of Ritual Killings Worldwide
- By: Jimmy Lee Shreeve
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Human sacrifice still goes on uncomfortably close to home - cases have been found in the U.S., Europe, and the United Kingdom. In other parts of the world, such as South America, ritual killing is almost commonplace. Human Sacrifice investigates the terrifying current spate of human sacrifices and ritual killings. Jimmy Lee Shreeve draws on police reports and interviews with the victims' families to paint a horrifying picture of ritual sacrifice at home and abroad.
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Trying to justify the unjustifiable.
- By Gorilichis on 10-29-20
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The Kremlin’s Noose
- Putin’s Bitter Feud with the Oligarch Who Made Him Ruler of Russia
- By: Amy Knight
- Narrated by: Holly Adams
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Kremlin's Noose Amy Knight tells the riveting story of Vladimir Putin and the oligarch Boris Berezovsky. When Putin began dismantling Boris Yeltsin's democratic reforms, Berezovsky came into conflict with the new Russian leader by reproaching him publicly. Their relationship quickly disintegrated into a bitter feud played out against the backdrop of billion-dollar financial deals, Kremlin in-fighting, and international politics.
By: Amy Knight
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The Last King of America
- The Misunderstood Reign of George III
- By: Andrew Roberts
- Narrated by: Phillipe Stevens
- Length: 36 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Most Americans dismiss George III as a buffoon - a heartless and terrible monarch with few, if any, redeeming qualities. The best-known modern interpretation of him is Jonathan Groff's preening, spitting, and pompous take in Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway masterpiece. But this deeply unflattering characterization is rooted in the prejudiced and brilliantly persuasive opinions of 18th-century revolutionaries. After combing through hundreds of thousands of pages of never-before-published correspondence, award-winning historian Andrew Roberts has uncovered the truth.
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Fantastic .. a proud defense of George III
- By Wyatt on 11-12-21
By: Andrew Roberts
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Oathbreakers
- The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe
- By: Matthew Gabriele, David M. Perry
- Narrated by: Paul Bellantoni
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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By the early ninth century, the Carolingian empire was at the height of its power. The Franks, led by Charlemagne, had built the largest European domain since Rome in its heyday. Though they jockeyed for power, prestige, and profit, the Frankish elites enjoyed political and cultural consensus. But just two generations later, their world was in shambles. Civil war, once an unthinkable threat, had erupted after Louis the Pious’s sons tried to overthrow him—and then placed their knives at the other’s neck. Families who had once charged into battle together now drew each other’s blood.
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The drama is exceptional
- By Nathan on 04-03-25
By: Matthew Gabriele, and others
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Didion and Babitz
- By: Lili Anolik
- Narrated by: Lili Anolik, Emma Roberts
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan? —Eve Babitz, in a letter to Joan Didion, 1972. Joan Didion, revealed at last… Eve Babitz died on December 17, 2021. Found in the wrack, ruin, and filth of her apartment, a stack of boxes packed by her mother decades before. The boxes were pristine, the seals of duct tape unbroken. Inside, a lost world. This world turned for a certain number of years in the late sixties and early seventies, and centered on a two-story rental in a down-at-heel section of Hollywood.
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I’m still Team Joan
- By Dorothy L. Lipman on 11-16-24
By: Lili Anolik
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Heretic
- Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of God
- By: Catherine Nixey
- Narrated by: Lalla Ward
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Contrary to the teachings of the church today, in the first several centuries of Christianity’s existence, there was no consensus as to who Jesus was or why he had mattered. Instead, there were many different Christs. One had a twin brother and traveled to India; another consorted with dragons. One particularly terrifying Christ scorned his parents and killed those who opposed him.
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A powerful exposé
- By Jeff on 12-22-24
By: Catherine Nixey
What listeners say about The Icon and the Idealist
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- Louise Beecher
- 01-13-25
I already knew a lot about this issue, i thought. But this book taught me a great deal.
I like the effort to present a big picture of the very complicate drive to brini reproductive freedom to America.
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