Madame Restell, by Jennifer Wright

Wright's eye-opening biography is essential to understanding the history of women's health and abortion in the U.S. Arriving in this country from Britain in 1831 with her alcoholic husband, Ann Trow Lohman (1812-1878) was widowed two years later and struggled to survive as a single mother, seamstress, and midwife. With support from her second husband, a free thinker, she offered services as a female physician from the couple's New York City brownstone, and as Madame Restell became an outspoken advocate for women's reproductive rights. Yet despite her eloquence, clinical expertise, and passion, she's been largely written out of the record--an error Wright's compelling book corrects.