The hormone factory

By Saskia Goldschmidt

Subjects: Female Contraceptive Agents, Netherlands, fiction, Fiction, historical, Jews, fiction, Fiction, Jewish businesspeople, Jews, Antisemitism

Description: Scientific progress and human decency butt heads in this debut novel, which was inspired by the real-life founder of Organon, the first pharmaceutical company to make and market birth control pills and testosterone replacement therapy. A Dutch meat company executive, Mordechai de Paauw built a pharmaceutical empire amid the chaos of Hitler's rise to power, in the process betraying his partner, his twin brother, his wife, and the young women who worked in his factory, whom he exploited sexually.