ONE NIGHT EIGHT years ago in New Hampshire, when guys at a Hillary Clinton rally unfurled signs reading "Iron My Shirt," the presidential candidate asked to have the lights turned up and laughed, "The remnants of sexism - alive and well!" Ellen Fitzpatrick, a historian and frequent PBS commentator, chooses this scene to open her book "The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women's Quest for the American Presidency," which traces the careers of Victoria Woodhull, Margaret Chase Smith and Shirley Chisholm, three of the most successful women (there have been more than 200) to have campaigned for the presidency. The Iron My Shirt moment, which came to stand as an easy emblem of the hard-to-describe gender bias faced by Clinton in her 2008 race, here provides a quick illustration of what a long strange trip toward the White House it's been for America's women. But the moment I think better illustrates why Fitzpatrick's history is an urgent, crucial contribution took place a few days after the Iron My Shirt episode. It was when Hillary staged a surprise upset in New Hampshire, becoming the first woman in American history to win a fully contested presidential primary. (Chisholm won a nonbinding preferential primary in New Jersey in 1972, though most of her Democratic competitors were not on the ballot against her.) In the wake of Clinton's historic victory, major news organizations, including The New York Times and CNN, failed to mention the milestone in their day-after coverage. We have some trouble, in this country, with women's history: celebrating it, making it central to our national narrative, remembering to notice when it is being made around us. By the time this review is published, Clinton may (or may not!) have clinched the Democratic primaries, making her the first woman ever nominated by a major party for the presidency. At which point many of us will put one hand over our eyes, one hand on the safety rail, open our mouths in a silent scream and just try to hang on through November. No matter what, we'll learn something from "The Highest Glass Ceiling," a book unlikely to calm any nerves, but which will at least put our gendered anxieties in historical perspective. Fitzpatrick spends one chapter on each of her subjects, beginning with Woodhull, whose tale is the weirdest of the bunch. A twice-married stockbroker who dabbled as a clairvoyant, associated with free-love advocates, nominated herself for the presidency in 1870, and then published a newspaper to support her candidacy, Woodhull spent two years on the campaign trail, a half-century before American women won the right to vote. Called by one newspaper "the frisky Wall Street heifer," Woodhull also railed against the "insatiable avarice" of "obese corporations" and the "despotism" of banks and railroads; she's a figure whose apparent contradictions feel familiar. Spoiler: She didn't win. Fitzpatrick's next subject, Maine's formidable Margaret Chase Smith, gained her seat in Congress via the "widow's mandate" in 1940. Smith was the first woman elected to the Senate in her own right and the first to serve in both houses of Congress. She was hilariously single-minded: Dispatched in 1938 as her dying anti-interventionist husband's surrogate, Smith simply began giving speeches in opposition to him, advocating increased military spending in the lead-up to the war. Smith governed with so little regard for party line - advocating the use of nuclear weapons against North Korea and China alongside support of labor unions; sharply denouncing Joseph McCarthy's Communist witch hunt from the Senate floor but supporting the McCarran Act - that one of her Republican colleagues would say, "If she votes with us, it is a coincidence." For years the only woman in the Senate, Smith was forced to use the public restroom since there was no ladies' room; she regularly declined White House invitations because she was never invited to bring a male companion. In one of the book's loveliest details, Fitzpatrick writes of how, when Jackie Kennedy explicitly suggested that Smith might bring a date, Smith wrote to her, "This is one of the most thoughtful things ever done in my 25 years in Washington." But if gendered loneliness affected Smith, she gave no sign. "I ignored any discrimination," Fitzpatrick quotes Smith as saying. "I never, never acknowledged it. Never." Of Smith, who ran for the Republican nomination in 1964, Fitzpatrick writes: "Surely no woman in American history before her, and few after, brought such rich and deep experience in mainstream electoral politics to a run for the presidency." Yet her run barely made a dent; born in 1897 and running in an age of youthful Kennedy enthusiasm, Smith was of another era. And then there was the Times columnist Russell Baker, musing bizarrely about the widowed Smith's "first man" : "At every airport stop, he will have to be photographed accepting huge bouquets of roses. Women reporters will badger him for his favorite recipes and advice on child care." Spoiler: She didn't win. Four years after Smith became the first woman to have her name entered into nomination at her party's convention, Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress, despite The Wall Street Journal's concern that sending her to the House "might tend to perpetuate the matriarchal society said to prevail in the Negro slums." When she got to Washington, Chisholm was promptly appointed to the Agriculture Committee. "Apparently all they know here in Washington about Brooklyn is that a tree grew there," she remarked, before objecting and getting reassigned to Veterans Affairs. Fitzpatrick covers Chisholm's frustration with sexism and bigotry from her own progressive peers, and her disappointment with some of her feminist colleagues, including her National Women's Political Caucus co-founders Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem, all of whom offered sometimes too tepid support during her historic 1972 run for the Democratic nomination. Spoiler: She didn't win. SOME OF THE threads Fitzpatrick traces through her subjects' stories prove disheartening. She writes of how Woodhull attributed her career in politics to a spirit who had appeared to her in childhood and prophesied "that she would become the ruler of her people," while Smith's explanation of her success was a vague nod to destiny: "It was just to be and I had little to do about it." And while no one would describe Hillary Clinton as a shrinking violet, recall her aw-shucks assertion during a recent debate: "I never thought I'd be standing on a stage here asking people to vote for me for president." It's a reminder of how hard it remains for women to simply admit to ambition. Which is part of why Chisholm's voice remains so electrifying. Speaking of her rise through ward politics, Chisholm explained without apology: "I had done it all to help other people get elected. The other people who got elected were men, of course, because that was the way it was in politics. . . . I was the best-qualified nominee, and I was not going to be denied because of my sex." Fitzpatrick doesn't end on Chisholm, but instead returns to Clinton in an epilogue. Fitzpatrick's citation of her famous 2008 concession speech, about all the cracks in that high ceiling, is difficult reading these days, especially the part about how "the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time." Mmm. We'll see about that. For now, Fitzpatrick's smartly timed book should remind us not to let whatever history we make just pass us by.

Fitzpatrick (history, Univ. of New Hampshire) offers short, well-written biographies of spiritualist/stockbroker Victoria Woodhull, US Senator Margaret Chase Smith, and US Representative Shirley Chisholm. They are women who seriously sought the White House prior to Hillary Clinton. Woodhull ran in the late 19th century; Smith and Chisholm covered the mid-20th century. Chisholm was also the first African American to mount a national campaign. Each biography spans the woman's life from birth to the end of her presidential bid. An epilogue covers Clinton's 2008 effort and the beginning of her 2016 campaign. The book illuminates the continuity of discrimination female candidates face and should work well in classes dedicated to political and women's history. However, readers will likely be frustrated by the author's decision to stop each biography abruptly with the end of each woman's presidential campaign. These are fascinating women, and readers will probably be prompted to turn to the internet to find the rest of their stories. Endnotes are provided. Summing Up: Recommended. General collections and lower-division undergraduates. --Caryn E. Neumann, Miami University