by Caroline Bologna: Goodreads compiled some of the most popular books about extraordinary women…

• • The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore

    

    Sourcebooks

    Goodreads Description: While radium made headlines as a wonder drug, the hundreds of young women working in the radium-dial factories — covered head to toe in the glittering chemical — began to fall ill. This is the powerful story of their fight for workers’ rights amidst one of the biggest scandals of the early 20th century.

  • Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang

    

    Simon & Schuster

    Goodreads Description: Blending memoir and eyewitness history, Jung Chang describes the lives of three generations of her family in China: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother, a young, idealistic Communist living through the Cultural Revolution; and herself, from brief member of the Red Guard to writer.

  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Sklott

    

    Broadway Books

    Goodreads Description: A poor Southern tobacco farmer, Henrietta Lacks became an unwitting pioneer for medical breakthroughs after her cells were taken without her knowledge. It took Rebecca Skloot over a decade to uncover this story, traveling to labs, slave quarters, and East Baltimore, where the Lacks family still struggles with Henrietta’s legacy.

  • The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

    

    Perfection Learning

    Goodreads Description: She was like most teenage girls, curious and stubborn and anxious for the future. Her diary, written in the Amsterdam attic where she and her family hid from Nazis during World War II, is a heartbreaking classic, an inspirational testament to the power of the human spirit.

  • Unbowed: A Memoir by Wangari Maathai

    

    Anchor

    Goodreads Description: Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, takes readers from the rural Kenyan village of her youth to her extraordinary life as a political activist and the first woman to earn a PhD in East and Central Africa. Her message of hope through self-sufficiency shines through the pages of her memoir.

  • Ida: A Sword Among Lions by Paula J. Giddings

    

    HarperCollins

    Goodreads Description: A sweeping narrative about a country and a crusader, this is the incredible biography of Ida B. Wells, the daughter of slaves, who led the nation’s first campaign against lynching. Historian Paula J. Giddings paints a vivid portrait of a civil rights champion in the context of her own time and ours.

• The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies by Jason Fagone

  

  Dey Street Books

  Goodreads Description: After World War I, Shakespeare expert turned code breaker Elizabeth Smith used her skills to catch gangsters during Prohibition, expose a Nazi spy ring, and match wits against Hitler’s Reich. This is the never-before-told story of her life and work, staggering achievements that helped shape modern intelligence.

• The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine F. Weiss

  

  Penguin Books

  Goodreads Description: It all came down to Tennessee. In 1920, after a seven-decade crusade, suffragists descended on Nashville, desperate to get the last state to ratify the 19th mendment, granting women the right to vote. Journalist Elaine F. Weiss focuses on the handful of courageous women who led the activists to victory.

• Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera

  

  Harper Perennial

  Goodreads Description: The world of magnetic Mexican painter Frida Kahlo springs to life in this sumptuous biography. From growing up during the Mexico Revolution to her tempestuous marriage to muralist Diego Rivera, she comes into her own as a cultural icon, embracing dramatic spectacle and transforming a country with her art.

  The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir