Nellie Bly:: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist

This is the definitive work on the reporter who traveled around the world in 72 days in 1889-1890 and was one of the pioneer women journalists. Nellie Bly started her career in Pittsburgh, at age 21, in 1885. She then moved to New York City in 1887 and wrote for the World until 1895, with one three-year hiatus. In 1895 she married a wealthy 70-year-old entrepreneur, Robert Seaman, and proved herself an astute business executive--except that she trusted her financial associates, who embezzled more than a million dollars and bankrupted her firm, which manufactured steel barrels. She returned to journalism in 1912 and covered WW I on the Eastern front from 1914 until 1919 as the only American woman reporter. Back in Manhattan she worked at the Evening Journal as a sort of Miss Lonelyhearts and amateur social worker until her death in 1922. Kroeger, a former reporter and editor for UPI, has done a prodigious amount of research for this compelling, if somewhat overlong biography. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour. (Mar.)