Rating: 
Summary: Not simply a how-to book on the pros of breastfeeding...
Review: This book has gotten bashed because it doesn't come out and say that breastfeeding is a must - but it does reveal a diversity of opinions, some of them mixed, about breast feeding. I found it refreshing and a welcome change from the "Women MUST breastfeed" books out there, masquerading as "unbiased" but actually quite one-sided. Yes, I believe breastfeeding is a good thing for mother and child but this doesn't mean (as Ms. Blum reveals) that it is always a joy. Unfortunately, I'm afraid so many will bash this book that it won't get a fair chance at finding its readership - and that is too bad.
Rating: 
Summary: Simplistic and biased
Review: This book provides overly-simplistic and biased analysis to a complex issue. The individuals within the author's tiny (twenty or fewer) sample sizes of various sub-cultures (such as La Leche League members, minority and disadvantaged women, etc) seem to have been hand-picked in order to "prove" her theory: that breastfeeding is an immensely difficult, arcane, and sexualized undertaking that can/should only be attempted by women with maximum personal privacy, family support and financial backing. The book entirely ignores the empowering, radical feminist nature of breastfeeding (see books by Penny Van Esterik, Katherine Dettwyler, and Gabrielle Palmer for academic research on this topic). The book completely neglects the issue of the relative risks of artificial feeding for American babies, and the book implies quite forcefully that the mountain of peer-reviewed medical research demosntrating the critical importance of human milk is flawed or over-stated in some way.A better title for this one would have been "Bottle-feeding Without Guilt". Oh wait....that one is already taken... Maybe "Bottle-Feeding Without Guilt for the Intelligentsia" would work then.
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