The daybook “Remember the Ladies” by...

The daybook “Remember the Ladies” by Kirsten Olsen (Sterling/Main Street Press: $20; 224 pp.) offers short biographies of women from ancient times to modern, from the outrageous to the exemplary. At the turn of the century, Nannie Helen Burroughs, top, was rejected for a teaching position in Washington, D.C., not because she was unqualified nor because she was black but because she was too black; she went on to found the National Training School for Women and Girls. Mary Edwards Walker, center, won permission to work as a surgeon for the Union during the Civil War, and was captured behind enemy lines. She was granted a Congressional Medal of Honor and wore it--and male clothing--the rest of her life. William Randolph Hearst hired Winifred Black, bottom, as rival to Joseph Pulitzer’s star reporter, Nellie Bly. Under the nom de plume Annie Laurie, Black became famous for her news - gathering ruses; she once gained an exclusive interview with Benjamin Harrison by hiding under a table in his campaign train.