Award-winning journalist Liza Mundy captures the human narratives, as well as the science, behind the controversial, multibillion-dollar fertility industry, and examines how this huge social experiment is transforming our most basic relationships and even our destiny as a species.

Skyrocketing infertility rates and dizzying technological advances are revolutionizing American families and changing the way we think about parenthood, childbirth, and life itself. Using in-depth reporting and riveting anecdotal material from doctors, families, surrogates, sperm and egg donors, infertile men and women, single and gay and lesbian parents, and children conceived through technology, Mundy explores the impact of assisted reproduction on individuals as well as the ethical issues raised and the potentially vast social consequences. The unforgettable personal stories in Everything Conceivable run the gamut from joyous to tragic; all of them raise questions we dare not ignore.

“Everything Conceivable is an earthquake of a book.”

The National Review Online

“A much-needed investigation into assisted reproductive technology. . . . [Mundy] illuminates domestic life and politics in contemporary America.”

The Financial Times

“Journalist Mundy proves herself a clear-eyed observer of these procedures and their cultural implications, with an unexpectedly easy style and sharp wit.”

Los Angeles Advocate

“Mundy, a reporter for The Washington Post, tells her tales in a fresh voice and with a keen eye for detail.”

The Washington Post Book World

“Mundy has compiled an exhaustive and at times heartbreaking survey of the issues raised by the new-fangled science of creating babies. . . . And while Mundy does an excellent job of rendering a lot of very technical information accessible . . . what makes the book compelling are the people she writes about. . . . Such details humanize the ethical questions that dog scientific advances, and Mundy’s skill at choosing her subjects makes for an emotionally exhausting book. Yet those same details, and that same discomfort, make for an unusually edifying read.”

Austin American-Statesman

“Making babies has become a big business in the United States, and Liza Mundy is there at the bedside, monitoring the rise of assisted reproductive technology. Mundy expertly tracks the fascinating scientific developments. But the real marvel of her book is her empathetic scrutiny of the human dramas and dilemmas those advances have brought with them. Everything Conceivable is a pioneering portrait of an industry that has, for better and for worse, altered our ideas of biology, family, destiny.”

Ann Hulbert, author of Raising America

“Beautifully written, unfailingly smart, Everything Conceivable is a marvelous book. Mundy’s empathy for people struggling to have children is palpable, but so is her keen astonishment at some of the brave new ways science has devised of helping them. This is a book full of unforgettable stories about human beings facing personal, ethical, and moral dilemmas we could scarcely have imagined a generation ago.”

Margaret Talbot

From the Hardcover edition.

"An irresistible dispatch from the far frontier of parenthood. . . . First-rate at explaining the science . . . and finding the flesh-and-blood people living in this remade world."

—The Plain Dealer

"Welcome to the wild new world of reproduction. . . . Liza Mundy follows dozens of topsy-turvy tales from the reproductive edge . . . [with] a fresh voice and with a keen eye for detail."

—The Washington Post Book World

"Fascinating. . . . The book gains considerable depth from Mundy's reportorial urge to dig into all aspects of a story."

—The New York Times Book Review

Liza Mundy received her A.B. degree from Princeton University and an M.A. at the University of Virginia. She is a feature writer at The Washington Post Magazine and her work was selected by Oliver Sacks for inclusion in The Best American Science Writing 2003. She has won awards from the Sunday Magazine Editors Association, among others. She lives in Arlington, Virginia, with her husband and two children.

From the Hardcover edition.