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Making Babies Count

The Sheppard-Towner Act and Building the Modern Administrative State

By: Michelle Bezark

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Hardcover | 30 April 2026

At a Glance

Hardcover
242 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4

Hardcover

RRP $189.95

$167.99

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This book is the first comprehensive account of the triumphs and follies of the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921-the first federal policy aimed at improving health outcomes for mothers and babies. Michelle Bezark insightfully weaves together the experiences of advocates and federal agents maneuvering around Congress to pass the law; state-level administrators' accounts of implementing its programs at the local level; and individual mothers' and children's experiences of the programs on the ground. This approach reveals the political, technical, and legal challenges of passing and administering early federal social welfare policy, and what this policy provided for-and required of-citizens. In reconstructing the full lifecycle of the law, Bezark tells the untold history of an important federal policy and provides a critical case study for how one group of reformers built out administrative capacity at every level of governance from scratch.

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