"[Glynis] Ridley's mission is to resurrect forgotten yet significant episodes in the emerging field of life sciences during Europe's age of enlightenment.... She takes on the thrilling and incensing story of Jeanne Baret. Born in 1740 in France's Loire valley, Baret became an expert 'herb woman' who proved to be indispensable to the ambitious botanist Philibert Commerson, accompanying him as his assistant when Commerson was appointed naturalist for France's first expedition to circumnavigate the globe. But women were forbidden, so Baret dressed as a man. Could she really fool the 330 men she lived with under grueling circumstances for three years? After tracking down and analyzing every scrap of paper pertaining to this historic voyage, Ridley tells the horrific story of Baret's brutal outing and reclaims with vigor Baret's discoveries as a pioneering botanist, including the flowering vine now known as bougainvillea, which Commerson named after the expedition commander, Louis-Antoine de Bougainville. Woven throughout this gripping story are Ridley's piquant insights into 18th-century exploration, botany, taxonomy, biopiracy, and sexism. Baret could not have asked for a more exacting and expressive champion. Ridley is incandescent in her passion for the truth."—Booklist (starred review)