Originally published in 1986, this book examines the history of midwifery, concentrating on 19th and 20th Century Britain. It shows how the evolution of the midwife has been influenced by cultural waves which started in the Near East and Egypt in pre-classical times and slowly spread Northwards and Eastwards over Europe. The authors emphasize the effects of specialization and professionalization upon midwifery and also the influence of male authority and interest group politics. The evolution of the educated qualified midwife of the 20th Century is recorded, leading up to the ongoing debates about high technology birth vis-à-vis natural birth and home deliveries.

Bohdan W. Oppenheim, PhD has been a professor of systems engineering at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles since 1983. He is a recognized global leader in Lean systems engineering and author of an influential book titled Lean for Systems Engineering with Lean Enablers for Systems Engineering. Dr. Oppenheim co-led a team of 15 experts supported by a community of 150 practitioners to develop the best Lean-inspired practices for managing complex engineering programs. For this work he received the Shingo Award, the highest honor in the field of operational excellence, INCOSE‘s Best Product Award, and two smaller awards. This work was later expanded into a joint project of the Project Management Institute (PMI), International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) led by a team based at Massachusetts Institute of Technology on which Oppenheim served as key contributor. The result was a second book on Lean-inspired best practices for managing engineering programs, The Guide to Lean Enablers for Managing Engineering Programs for which the team was honored with a Shingo Award (the second for Oppenheim). Dr. Oppenheim is the founder and co-leader of the INCOSE Lean Systems Engineering Working Group, the organization‘s largest working group involving more than 200 members. He also directed Loyola Marymount University‘s US Department of Energy Industrial Assessment Center. In this capacity, he advised 125 Southern California companies of all sizes and types on Lean productivity matters. With S. Rubin, Dr. Oppenheim designed Aerospace Corporation‘s POGO simulator for liquid rockets used by NASA and private industry. He consulted for Northrop-Grumman, Boeing, Airbus, EADS, Telekomunikacja Polska, Mars, Medtronics, the US Coast Guard and the US Air Force, Thales, TRW, and 50 other firms and governmental institutions in the United States and Europe. Dr. Oppenheim is or was a member of INCOSE, LAI EdNet,