The story of the iconic Barbie doll is as much the story of the woman who developed and marketed her, entrepreneur Ruth Handler. A fiercely competitive and creative business pioneer and the cofounder of the Mattel toy company, Handler modified an existing German doll marketed to adults and in 1959 introduced Barbie—a product that nearly everyone assured her would fail. Robin Gerber tells the story of the doll's success in this biography of the seemingly indomitable Handler, who was ousted from her own company in the 1970s and returned as a maker of prosthetics for women who, like her, had lost their breasts to cancer.
"Gerber's smoothly-written biography paints a fearless business woman as a devoted wife, a too-busy mother and a rock-'em-sock-'em executive."—NYPost
