Discover the true story of a self-taught surgeon and trailblazing figure in medical history—Madame Restell, a revolutionary surgeon who fought for women's rights and healthcare in Gilded Age New York.​ An industrious immigrant who built her business from the ground up, Madame Restell was a self-taught surgeon on the cutting edge of healthcare in pre-Gilded Age New York, and her bustling “boarding house” provided birth control, abortions, and medical assistance to thousands of women—rich and poor alike. As her practice expanded, her notoriety swelled, and Restell established her-self as a prime target for tabloids, threats, and lawsuits galore. But far from fading into the background, she defiantly flaunted her wealth, parading across the city in designer clothes, expensive jewelry, and bejeweled carriages, rubbing her success in the faces of the many politicians, publishers, fellow physicians, and religious figures determined to bring her down. Unfortunately for Madame Restell, her rise to the top of her field coincided with “the greatest scam you’ve never heard about”—the campaign to curtail women’s power by restricting their access to both healthcare and careers of their own. Powerful, secular men—threatened by women’s burgeoning independence—were eager to declare abortion sinful, a position endorsed by newly-minted male MDs who longed to edge out their feminine competition and turn medicine into a standardized, male-only practice. By unraveling the misogynistic and misleading lies that put women’s lives in jeopardy, Wright simultaneously restores Restell to her rightful place in history and obliterates the faulty reasoning underlying the very foundation of what has since been dubbed the “pro-life” movement. Thought-provoking, character-driven, boldly written, and feminist as hell, Madame Restell is required reading for anyone and everyone who believes that when it comes to women’s rights, women’s bodies, and women’s history, women should have the last word .   An Amazon Best Book of March 2023: They say that history is written by the victors, which goes a long way towards explaining the anonymity of Ann Trow, a.k.a. Madame Restell. Jennifer Wright’s meticulously researched, dryly humorous, and frankly feminist biography of the glamorous, celebrated, and unapologetic abortionist—whose defiance in the face of an oppressive patriarchy can best be described as (ahem) ballsy—should set that right. In an era when trying to evade the clutches of would-be impregnaters was a full time job—and the price paid by women for failure ranged from shame to penury to much worse—along came a disrupter: an immigrant woman and amateur surgeon in Victorian-era New York, who marketed and provided abortions so safe and convenient she was beloved by her patients, and a self-made millionaire to boot. Dismantling centuries-old misconceptions, Wright blends rousing biography and eye-opening medical and cultural history lessons in this compulsively readable biography of a remarkable woman. —Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Editor **Longlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize in Nonfiction (2023)** ** Smithsonian Magazine , “10 Best History Books of 2023”** **Audible, "12 Best History Listens of 2023" ** **An Amazon EDITOR'S PICK for BEST BOOKS OF 2023 SO FAR in BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR and HISTORY** ​ **An Amazon EDITOR'S PICK for BEST BOOKS OF THE MONTH (March 2023)** **INDIE NEXT List Pick for March 2023** **A Bookshop.Org EDITOR'S PICK (March 2023)*** Next Idea Book Club, "February Must Reads" and "40 Nonfiction Books to Watch Out For in 2023" Cosmopolitan , "11 Best Books to Put on Your TBR" Amazon, Best Books in History and Nonfiction (March 2023) The Spectator, "Books to Watch Out For in 2023" American Journal of Bioethics , "Recommended Reading" "Painfully timely... Wright observes that Americans don’t take well to learning history. When it is delivered with this kind of blunt force, however, perhaps they might. Whatever readers end up thinking of Madame Restell, they surely cannot miss the core lesson: that there has never been a culture in human history without abortion. The only variable has ever been the cost.― New York Times Book Review “A searing portrait of an indomitable woman… Wright juxtaposes her subject’s story with those of Restell’s patients and an overview of the broader conversation surrounding abortion in the late 19th century.”― Smithsonian Magazine "Wright’s book dances off the page."― Washington Post "They say that history is written by the victors, which goes a long way towards explaining the anonymity of Ann Trow, a.k.a. Madame Restell. Jennifer Wright’s meticulously researched, dryly humorous, and frankly feminist biography of the glamorous, celebrated, and unapologetic abortionist—whose defiance in the face of an oppressive patriarchy can best be described as (ahem) ballsy—should set that right... Dismantling centuries-old misconceptions, Wright blends rousing biogr