A book about Barbie and her maker, Ruth Handler. This is a neat book in terms of that it was neatly portioned out. I was able to read the book over a 2 week period without missing a beat. Nothing spectacular.

The book did focus much more on Ruth Handler than Barbie. It told a story without getting emotionally involved. After reading the book, I don't feel anything special toward Ruth Handler. Neither did I throughout the book. ( )

This is an excellent short biography of the woman who created and sold Barbie. It is also the story of a woman who built her own company from the ground up when business was a males world. It is the story of Ruth Handler and her husband Elliot. Elliot was the designer who had the ideas and the skills to bring a project to fruition. Ruth was the business brains. Elliot created. Ruth sold. Together they built Mattel into a huge conglomerate.

It is also the story of their rise and fall. Ruth was successfully prosecuted by the SEC, pre Martha Stewart, and served time as a convicted felon. It is also the story of a breast cancer survivor who used her business building know-how to create a build a second company devoted to helping breast cancer survivors regain their dignity and looks.

I expects this to be a dry dull book and was so pleasantly surprised to find it very readable and exciting. What A Woman! I would have liked to meet her. ( )

This is a well-written story of Ruth Handler's life from her childhood being raised by a sister, to her success at founding and growing Mattel, to her legal problems associated with money mishandling at the company, to her reincarnation as the creator of the Nearly Me breast prosthetic. Handler is clearly a complex woman, and this biography deals well with those complexities. ( )