Product Description
This worldwide history of circumcision, from ancient times to the present, looks at the procedure as initiation, religious and social ritual, and indicator of ethnic and social status. How has a medical practice that carries substantial risk to the patient and offers very little actual benefit become so widely accepted by parents and fiercely advocated by the medical community? Historian of medicine David Gollaher tells the strange history of medicine's oldest enigma and most persistent ritual in Circumcision. From the extraordinarily painful initiation rite of the ancient Egyptians, through the Hebrew purification ritual, through circumcision's use by the rising medical community in the nineteenth century as prevention for ailments ranging from bedwetting to paralysis, the great mystery has been the persistence of the practice through vastly different social contexts.

Amazon.com Review
More than a million infant boys are circumcised every year in America, the highest occurrence of this procedure in the world. Why? Out of sheer cultural habit, concludes David Gollaher in his groundbreaking study, Circumcision. The tremendous momentum behind Gollaher's account is generated by one simple question: what is known about this most common of procedures? Alarmingly, precious little. Gollaher remedies that problem by tracing the historical roots of circumcision as a rite of passage into manhood in various ancient cultures before bringing the reader to 19th-century America, when circumcision rates skyrocketed through endorsements by the nascent American medical profession, which credited circumcision with exaggerated health benefits. Circumcision would eventually turn into a mark of class distinction, and the surgery would become entrenched in modern medical practices, despite scant study of its benefits, dangers, or side effects. Gollaher is to be commended for maintaining an even perspective on a practice that is sure to become increasingly controversial; he allows the research itself to fascinate and illuminate. As expected, there are many unsettling graphic descriptions in this book, but its most horrifying revelation is its most casual: the incontrovertible fact that circumcision remains the least understood--yet most widely practiced--surgery in the United States. --Sumi Hahn Almquist

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 12 reviews)

a really, really, reallllllly good book by jazzsinger1966 (San Francisco CA)

5 Stars
November 21, 2009
I'm a chick and it just never dawned on me to question circumcision until one day I saw a little essay written by some guy who'd had one and was really upset about it. Well I did a little research and thought the reasons for it were really lame, but I just couldn't figure out WHY *we* (AMERICANS!) do this to our babies. I've been wondering for 10 years now and finally came across this book. This book is really terrific and it covers from the earliest known incidences (4000BC!) to today. And since the US did not USED to circumcise all boys (this is a recent thing), the authour WAS able to show if not WHY then HOW it came to be that we do this random and kinda strange (and cruel) thing to our boys. And using no anesthesia until VERY recently! It's a pretty strange behaviour for a modern people. The book's pretty well balanced, though, and it does cover the arguments for circumcision (SOME of which are not bad arguments) as well as the arguments against, the connection to female "circumcision" (it's a believable one), and pretty much anything you would want to know about having some of your wiener cut off. He cites and discusses studies, historical events, and so forth. It was so well-written and easy to read that it was very difficult to put down until the end.

Cultural History of Circumcision by lindyjulie (Evanston, IL)

5 Stars
May 02, 2003
This is not an academic history text or a manual for parents who are trying to decide whether to circumcise their infant sons. But it will probably be of interest to both groups; after all, the list of books covering male circumcision is quite a short one, and Gollaher's book is a fascinating read.David Gollaher provides a very readable cultural history of the practice of circumcision for the general public, explaining the orgins and prevalence of this custom in modern American medical practice. He succeeds in his goal of making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. The strange is made familiar as Gollaher discusses the role that circumcision has played in a wide variety of cultures from aboriginal cultures to Judaism to Islam. And the familiar becomes more and more strange as Gollaher reviews the forces that caused circumcision to become adopted into the medical community in America. The more one reads about what the foreskin is and does, the odder it seems that this is such a routine procedure.I'd recommend this to anyone interested in a fairly balanced historical account of circumcision and the forces that have made it such an entrenched practice in the West.

Accurate but Cursory by Chuck (The Great White North)

4 Stars
September 08, 2000
David Gollaher has delivered an effective synopsis of the history of circumcision, the first of which has been published since the late nineteenth century. Much has happened in the last 100 years. It is unclear what motivated Gollaher, a historian with his doctorate in history from Harvard University, but his conclusions are dead on: if circumcision were a new medical procedure it would never garner favor or approval. Other than a few minor factual errors, his account is accurate. By giving a factual representation of the actions of circumcision's current adovates, he portrays these individuals in a very negative way. For this reason, those who favor male circumcision will find his book unacceptably accurate. I felt the book barely scratched the surface of circumcision's rich history. Each chapter left me wanting more information. I also expected more historical analysis. Rather than just recounting the historical facts Gollaher, with the benefit of his expensive education, should have provided the reader with an understanding of how the facts fit into a historical context. The facts are interesting, but what do they mean? The book, perhaps to assure a certain number of sales, is aimed at the general public, who will not doubt find the topic and treatment of it interesting. For those interested in circumcision on an academic or activist level, the book does not offer much new information. Still, it is reassuring that a mainstream American publisher had the courage to put an accurate portrayal of circumcision in print.

Mothers choice.

3 Stars
August 18, 2000
Why? The reason is that western women prefer circumsized males, though they would never admit that this was the reason. Rather they always cite questionable and dated research indicating medical benifits. This is a misandrist act of mutilation done for the vain preference of mothers.

Too Late for Some But Maybe Not for Many, Snips at Ignorance by Azlan Adnan (Kota Kinabalu)

5 Stars
July 31, 2000
You might think that the most common surgery in the United States would also be the least controversial-an operation whose medical necessity and benefits have proved beyond question. And you would be wrong. As this fascinating history of that procedure makes clear, circumcision is rooted not in medical science, but in the deepest recesses of religion and culture. Circumcision is performed on more than one million infant and prepubescent boys around the world every year. In America, even though a growing number of physicians dispute its benefits, circumcision remains the most frequently performed elective surgical procedure. In 1995, 64.1% of US male newborns were circumcised-yet there is no proven medical benefit to this practice on normal infants. This book, by medical historian David L. Gollahar presents a fascinating history of this controversial practice and why it has persisted over time through vastly different social contexts.As this book shows, the removal of genital foreskin has a long and varied history: from the extraordinarily painful initiation rite of the ancient Egyptians, through the Hebrew purification ritual, through its use by nineteen-century doctors as prevention for ailments including bedwetting, paralysis, syphilis, and epilepsy, to the present persistence of female circumcision in African cultures. Gollaher also addresses the current controversy over the procedure's continuance, and those opposing routine circumcision will find support here.Gollaher concludes that "if male circumcision were confined to developing nations," similar to the status of female circumcision, "it would by now have emerged as an international cause célèbre."David L. Gollaher (1949- ) is President and CEO of the California Healthcare Institute, a statewide public policy research and advocacy institute. He holds a PhD in History from Harvard and has served on the facilities of San Diego State University's Graduate School of Public Health and the University of California, San Diego.

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	Circumcision, The Hidden Trauma : How an American Cultural Practice Affects Infants and Ultimately Us All by Ronald Goldman (Author) Circumcision: The Hidden Trauma is the first intensive exploration of the unrecognized psychological and social effects of this American cultural practice. The book has been endorsed by dozens of professionals in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, child development, pediatrics, obstetrics, childbirth education, sociology, and anthropology. Plain facts and recent research results revealed in the book conflict with popular beliefs and raise serious questions. Goldman's application...
	Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America by Leonard B. Glick (Author) The book of Genesis tells us that God made a covenant with Abraham, promising him a glorious posterity on the condition that he and all his male descendents must be circumcised. For thousands of years thereafter, the distinctive practice of circumcision served to set the Jews apart from their neighbors. The apostle Paul rejected it as a worthless practice, emblematic of Judaism's fixation on physical matters. Christian theologians followed his lead, arguing that whereas Christians sought...
	A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision in Britain by Robert Darby (Author) In the eighteenth century, the Western world viewed circumcision as an embarrassing disfigurement peculiar to Jews. A century later, British doctors urged parents to circumcise their sons as a routine precaution against every imaginable sexual dysfunction, from syphilis and phimosis to masturbation and bed-wetting. Thirty years later the procedure again came under hostile scrutiny, culminating in its disappearance during the 1960s. Why Britain adopted a practice it had traditionally...
	Circumcision Exposed: Rethinking a Medical and Cultural Tradition by Billy Ray Boyd (Author) An emotionally literate, culturally sensitive, yet fearless exploration of why the United States is the only country in the world to circumcise a majority of its baby boys for supposedly medical reasons. Includes various aspects of the practice, including its impact on sexuality.
	The Female Circumcision Controversy: An Anthropological Perspective by Ellen Gruenbaum (Author) To the Western eye, there is something jarringly incongruous, even shocking, about the image of a six-year-old girl being held down by loving relatives so that her genitals can be cut. Yet two million girls experience this each year. Most Westerners, upon learning of the practice of female circumcision, have responded with outrage; those committed to improving the status of women have gone beyond outrage to action by creating various programs for "eradicating" the practice. But few...