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A fresh, comprehensive biography of the pioneering educator and activist who changed the way we look at children's minds, from the author of Oriana Fallaci.Born in 1870 in Chiaravalle, Italy, Maria Montessori would grow up to embody almost every trait men of her era detested in the fairer sex. She was self-confident, strong-willed, and had a fiery temper at a time when women were supposed to be soft and pliable. She studied until she became a doctor at a time when female graduates in Italy provoked outright scandal. She never wanted to marry or have children - the accepted destiny for all women in her milieu of late nineteenth-century bourgeois Rome - and when she became pregnant by a colleague of hers, she gave up her son to continue pursuing her career.