Journalist Mary Gabriel hews more closely to the particulars of Victoria Woodhull’s life than Barbara Goldsmith does in Other Powers, but in its more focused way her traditional biography is just as revelatory of larger issues in American society. Gabriel prompts new respect for the feminist who was so scandalous that she was erased from traditional feminist history. Woodhull was an intrepid go-getter who rose from a wooden shack in Ohio to a manor house in England, pausing along the way to become America’s first female stockbroker (in 1870) and the first woman to run for president (in 1872).