Drawing on his own intimate quest to discover the truth of his conception, entrepreneur Boni (author of the 2015 crisis-management book All Hands on Deck) surveys what he calls the “the long, secretive, and sometimes scandalous history” of artificial insemination. He opens with his own wrenching story. In 1995, over thirty years after his father’s death from suicide—years of fearing that his father’s depression might be an inheritable trait—the adult Boni learned that his father had in fact been sterile and that Boni was the product of artificial insemination in the years just after the second world war. That revelation kicks off Boni’s search for his true biological roots, a search that also reveals the surprisingly long and checkered history of artificial insemination itself.Boni details these events and his discoveries in clear, crisp prose that refreshingly balances shoe-leather reporting, scientific history (from Henry IV to the 19th century “father of modern gynecology” to the “human-ape hybrid experiment of Red Frankenstein”!), and the emotions of his search and its impact on him and his family. He worries, understandably, “Was my parents’ fertility doctor a eugenics practitioner, or worse, a Klansman?” His mother reports that the doctor who handled the insemination demanded the family keep the procedure secret “for life”; Boni’s research, meanwhile, reveals that tens of thousands of children were conceived this way in the mid twentieth century, in an unregulated system in which doctors often ran no tests on sperm donors—and offered the children no avenue to discover their biological relatives in later life.
This is gripping, upsetting material, told with clarity and wit. Boni’s breakthroughs come in the 2000s, with DNA testing and the internet, and readers interested in issues of genealogy will tear through the pages. What he eventually discovers is truly jolting, compelling evidence for the necessity of a “Donor-Conceived Bill of Rights” for abolishing parental anonymity and limiting the number of offspring per donor.
Takeaway: An eye-opening and dramatic account of the history of artificial insemination and one man’s quest to discover his biological origins.
Great for fans of: Dani Shapiro’s Inheritance, Elizabeth Katkin’s Conceivability: What I Learned Exploring the Frontiers of Fertility.
Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A
