Beatrice Zucca Micheletto combines a carefully researched and extensive body of archival material with an ambitious argument: namely, that non-noble women in eighteenth-century Turin, as both workers and providers of capital, were instrumental to the economic success of their families. Further, she argues that women were powerful actors, as both property owners and as workers, in their communities as well as in their families. In this regard, Micheletto engages with the questions of women's work and wealth, revisiting the notion that women were economically disempowered, especially in an area governed by a dotal regime like Turin. She, like many other historians, also addresses the notion of the family economy and the disempowerment of women implied by that concept. Micheletto finds that, far from being subordinate within the family economy, earning minimal wages commandeered by husbands, women were powerful economic actors within their households, enjoying a respected and quasi-egalitarian status with their husbands. In addition to wages, women's respected status in the household also derived from the financial assets women brought to marriages, an element of women's economic status that Micheletto also examines in depth.

Micheletto divides her book into two sections. After a general, and too brief, introduction to the city of Turin, its economy, laws and social structure, she discusses female capital, namely dowry and trousseaux, in three chapters. In addition to explaining the legal and cultural meaning of the dowry, Micheletto provides a great deal of quantitative data on who brought dowries to marriages, what amounts brides brought, when dowries were paid, and other such information. Through out her research, Micheletto constructs a nuanced view of dowries, showing that they were not simply exchanged by elite families, nor were they empty promises made by families and never made good. She demonstrates that the dowry was not only an expression of the status of the bride herself: her age and social status directly monetised. Rather, Micheletto finds that ‘the value of the dowry depend[ed] on the family's desire to show off its social prestige’ (p. 30). The widespread use of dowries and their importance to the family economy enhanced the status of wives in their own households, in no small measure because the bride's family considered the dowry an enduring expression of her status, not simply a formality necessary to conclude a marriage.

In her chapter on the trousseau, Micheletto brings to bear data showing the values of trousseaux, how they were used as collateral for loans, and how the values became a way to assess household status. In terms of capital, Micheletto finds that the bridal trousseau, which was generally a collection of clothing and household goods, provided invaluable collateral for small temporary loans. It was a quasi-liquid source of wealth that could help families get through momentary periods of financial strain. This was less disruptive than negotiating a sale or loan based on the dowry, which could be used for raising funds or even sold in dire circumstances, but had many legal limitations on how it could be used. Micheletto pushes against the idea that female wealth was static and of little economic use to a newly formed household. Rather, she argues persuasively that due to the contribution of dowries and trousseaux, wives had important voices in making household decisions, voices not drowned out by the patriarchal structure of Turinese families.

Three other chapters look at the other way that women contributed to the family's finances, namely through their paid labour. Micheletto focuses primarily on artisanal households, so a good deal of attention is paid to how women were trained for skilled work, and what roles wives and widows played in a family business. As other historians of women have found, Micheletto shows that female work was instrumental to the success of a family business, and that wives brought both valuable skills and dedication with them. She also shows that the fluidity of wifely labour, and the ways that a woman could step in for her husband, made her contributions particularly valuable in comparison with other workers in an enterprise.

Another way that women could support their families was through their access to charities earmarked for women. Micheletto argues that mothers were able to work in part due to the support provided by the Ospedale di Carità, which helped mothers find wet nurses so they could continue to work, and which distributed charity to women who could not adequately support themselves. Here we see not only broad acceptance of working mothers, but also recognition that mothers could be at a disadvantage in the labour market and needed assistance to continue working.

Overall Micheletto's book provides a valuable resource to historians of the early modern world, labour, economy and gender. Her work is well supported and clearly argued. The work would have been enhanced by a more extensive discussion of early modern Turin, especially for non-specialists who look to this work to inform their understanding of labour or gender. As well, Micheletto's chapters would have been enhanced by more robust conclusions, providing further synthesis and explanation for the wealth of data she brings to her readers.

Micheletto's work participates in a larger debate about the nature of female work, the economic weight of wives in their families, and more generally about the extent of female autonomy and authority. Like other historians of gender, Micheletto demonstrates that women were far from silent and powerless members of their families. Rather, they contributed skill, dedication, hard work and valuable capital to the family. So while it is undeniable that women in Turin, like elsewhere in eighteenth-century Europe, lived at a time and place where women were disadvantaged legally, economically, religiously and morally, nonetheless in their daily lives women found ways to get around these substantial strictures. Micheletto's extensive data provide a very concrete picture of precisely how women found ways to participate in their families and in the economy of Turin.