The Improbable Victoria Woodhull: Suffrage, Free Love, and the First Woman to Run for President

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • From the acclaimed author of What the Ermine Saw and Behaving Badly, a portrait of Victoria Woodhull, a celebrated and maligned 19th-century businesswoman and activist, and a leader in the fight for women’s suffrage and labor reforms.

In 1894, a remarkably self-possessed American woman, with no formal education to speak of, stood before a British court seeking damages for libel from the trustees of the British Museum. It was yet another stop a...