In her introduction to Sue Macy’s biography of pioneering journalist Nellie Bly, Linda Ellerbee firmly positions Bly as a feminist and fighter for social justice. Macy’s narrative engagingly affirms that analysis. Growing up in the mid-nineteenth century, Elizabeth Cochrane saw her mother struggle in an abusive second marriage. At twenty-one, Cochrane read an opinion column in a Pittsburgh newspaper against women working outside the home (because their role is to “be a helpmate to a man, not compete with him”) and could not remain silent. Her response, which acknowledged that many women must support themselves, argued that women should be able to pursue any work they wish and receive pay equal to what men earn. It launched her career in journalism, under the pseudonym Nellie Bly. By age twenty-five, Bly had reported on female factory workers and their working conditions, gone undercover to chronicle deplorable conditions in a women’s asylum, reported on government censorship and corruption in Mexico, and crossed the globe filing stories from around the world. Black-and-white photographs and other period illustrations round out this compelling biography. (Ages 11–15)

Bylines is the latest title from award-winning biographer Sue Macy. Nellie Bly was a pioneering American journalist who lived by the belief that "Energy rightly applied and directed will accomplish anything." This credo took her from humble origins in Cochran’s Mill, Pennsylvania, a town named after her father, to the most exotic cities around the globe by the time she was 25.

Nellie Bly was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in 1864, in an age when many women led unassuming lives. Her life would make people sit up and take notice: When she wasn’t making history herself, she was writing about others who did. Rarely has anyone left a more detailed record of her place in the world than Nellie Bly. In a very public life, she shared her feelings and opinions through her writing and embraced the struggles of all classes of Americans who were fighting for their rights.

The story of the two decades before and after the turn of the 20th century was her story, and she wrote with a powerful pen. Her "stunt journalism" included getting herself committed to an insane asylum for women and circling the globe in a mere 72 days. She profiled leaders from Susan B. Anthony to Eugene V. Debs, exposed corruption, and offered her readers a travelogue that expanded their horizons, even as it made the world a little smaller.

Her words live on even now, and Sue Macy’s masterful biography invites young readers into Nellie Bly’s America, a country at a time of great growth and social change.