By Beth Geohring

If you haven’t seen the fantastic, starry Stephen Sondheim 90^th birthday tribute, available on YouTube, you’re in for a treat! Two and a half hours of sophisticated wordplay, sublime music, and terrific performances—not to be missed. It got me to thinking about some amazing women whose stories of breaking in, breaking down, and breaking the rules are available now to show the rest of us how’s it done.

Need I say more? The greatest interpreter (sorry, Patti!) of the Sondheim classic “The Ladies Who Lunch” was the niece of a Catholic archbishop, a devoted wife, and a brilliant, tormented actor. Get the book.

Dames and divas don’t just come from New York. With their unique sound and their indomitable persistence, these two took the country-western world by storm for, in Patsy’s case, far too short a time and, in Loretta’s case, God willing, forever. Get the book.

She may not sing or dance or play guitar, but Madeleine Albright is still performing at the top of her game. Eminently sensible and exquisitely articulate, she has much to say that we all need to hear. Get the book.

Beth Goehring believes, with apologies to Lorelei Lee, that rather than diamonds books are a girl’s best friend…and a boy’s, a man’s and a woman’s. For more than twenty-five years, through Book-of-the-Month Club and its related clubs, she’s sold popular fiction, mysteries, romances, cookbooks, children’s books, play scripts, behind-the-scenes tales of the movies and theatre, and lifestyle books. She lives with her husband in Manhattan.