Mother of Invention: How Good Ideas Get Ignored in an Economy Built for Men

An illuminating and maddening examination of how gender bias has skewed innovation, technology, and history—now in paperback

It all starts with a rolling suitcase. Though the wheel was invented some 5,000 years ago, and the suitcase in the 19th century, it wasn’t until the 1970s that someone successfully married the two. What was the holdup? For writer and journalist Katrine Marçal, the answer is both shocking and simple: because “real men” carried their bags, no matter how heavy.

Mother o...