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Strange Bedfellows: Adventures in the Science, History, and Surprising Secrets of STDs
Top of the pile
86
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
95/100Critics
77/100Scholars
Author:
Ina Park
Publisher:
Flatiron Books
Date:
February 2, 2021
Ina Park, MD, has been pushing boundaries to empower and inform others about sexual health for decades. With Strange Bedfellows, she ventures far beyond the bedroom to examine the hidden role and influence of these widely misunderstood infections and share their untold stories.
What The Reviewers Say
MD Park creates an engrossing, fun, and frank discussion of the science and history behind sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and calls for us to have sex safely. Through Park’s engaging writing, readers are brought into a scientific arena filled with safe-sex proponents, women’s reproductive rights advocates, and LBGTQ+ and anti-racist allies, all seeking to overturn centuries of systemic discrimination inherent in sexual and reproductive health sciences. The strength of this book lies in Park’s presentation of personal stories and the removal of the morality often tied to the topic of STDs, or sexually transmitted infections (STIs), as they are sometimes known...With sensitivity, she also addresses the history of diseases among people who are currently in jail or prison.
Strange Bedfellows is, of course, timely, not least because more people are thinking about infectious disease and contact tracing now than at perhaps any time in history. This is the year to consider more clearly and compassionately humans’ coexistence with transmissible critters.
Park’s professional credentials are obvious and extensive, but it’s her easy, cheery writing style that carries the book. She makes the smart decision to ground virtually all of the enormous amount of information she wants to convey in the form of individual people - friends, patients, family members; this book is every bit as informative as a diagnostic overview would be, but it couldn’t be more different as a reading experience.
... [an] alternatingly fascinating, perplexing, and stomach-turning report.
