J.M. Fenster is the award-winning author of many works of American history and commentary, including Packard: The Pride, which won several national awards; Ether Day, which won the Anesthesia Foundation prize; the New York Times bestseller Parish Priest with Doug Brinkley; the PBS documentary First Freedom; and the book Mavericks, Miracles and Medicine, which was also a documentary on A&E. After writing The Spirit of Invention at the invitation of the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center, she published two works of presidential biography: The Case of Abraham Lincoln and FDR's Shadow. Fenster has been called "witty" by The New York Times and compared to Mark Twain by The Wall Street Journal. Her most recent book was Jefferson's America. A graduate of Colgate University, she lives in upstate New York.
