Hello, this is NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Glenn Weldon. If you know anything about the

trailblazing 19th century journalist Elizabeth Cochran Seaman, who wrote under the pseudonym

Nellie Bly, it's probably that she circumnavigated the globe in just 72 days, beating Jules

Verne's fictional Phineas Fogg by a week and some change. But there's a lot more to her story.

She launched a new kind of investigative reporting by going undercover as a mental patient to

expose brutal treatment at an asylum. She was a suffragist, a war correspondent, and in her later

years, an industrialist and inventor who patented a new kind of steel milk can. And she did all this in a system that

kept trying to slot her into writing about women's fashion and housekeeping. Undaunted is a new

book by Brooke Kroger that highlights women journalists like Nellie B. Wells, Martha Gellhorn, Rachel

Carson, and many more. These women blazed trails within a system that

threw all manner of obstacles in their path, obstacles never faced by their male colleagues.

Kroger talked to weekend editions, Scott Simon. In the U.S., national security news can feel

far away from daily life. Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.

On our new show, Sources and Methods, NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,

helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.

Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

For Kroger's is her new book.

Makes no claim to being all-inclusive,

but a rich torrent of name,

stories and history follows.

Ida B. Wells, Nellie B. B. B.

B. B. Horde, Rachel Gellhorn,

...