“Barbie and her creator, the sharp-elbowed gal who built the biggest toy company, have a story to tell.”

 —Time

Barbie and Ruth by Ruth Gerber is the remarkable true story of the world’s most famous toy and the woman who created her. It is a fascinating account of how one visionary woman and her product changed an industry and sparked a lasting debate about women’s roles. At once a business book, a colorful portrait of an extraordinary female entrepreneur, and a breathtaking look at a cultural phenomenon, Barbie and Ruth is a must read for anyone who ever owned a Barbie doll—a book Publishers Weekly calls, “a stirring biography…a fine study of success and resilience.”

It is far more than that and far more even-handed than is usual in these types of biographies. Plus the writing is first-rate. It reads like a novel and as the friend who gave me his copy said' "I couldn't put it down." Personally, I read it while traveling in one day.

The book covers her entire life, warts and all, and uses her relationship to Barbie, the ubiquitous fashion doll, as a way of showing what drove Ruth Handler and what, in some ways, defined her. As the leader of Mattel, she put in motion actions that totally changed the toy business, forever. As a woman she broke down walls so that others wouldn't have to.

The books sub-title is a little mis-leading in that the book is not about Barbie but about Ruth Handler. Other than that, it is a fascinating story and one I can recommend to anyone interested in the struggles of women for equality in the business world, in the toy business generally, in the development of the world's largest selling toy: Barbie, and in the very human story of a driven successful, failed and eventually redeemed, almost bigger than life person, Ruth Handler.