It would be interesting to have all the women profiled in this book in one room. They have much to teach us today, they broke barriers, they had fierce ambitions and egos, and lived up to their own sense of destiny. Each woman put her finger on the warm clay of her era and helped shape it. Constance Baker Motley, who argued Brown v. Board of Education, is a profile in courage, warring against race hate, against all odds. The ethereal and unpredictable Luise Rainer, who won two Academy Awards by the age of 30, then fled Hollywood (and married a bookseller!) determined to rebel against any form of domination. Bess Myerson, the first Jewish Miss America, faced down personal scandal. The sunniest of the women, Kitty Carlisle Hart, a professional charmer and tireless advocate for the arts started her morning by smiling at herself in mirror.

"Kitty, I forgive you, " she told herself. And there are the Becky Sharps who used powerful men for their ascent: Marietta Tree, Pamela Harriman, Clare Booth Luce. And the flamboyantly eccentric Kay Thompson, whose Eloise gave her a place in American cultural history; Jacqueline Onassis, happiest in her.