Insane Women We Have Known + Loved

To coincide with the visit earlier this year of hopefully not-the-next-President of the United States, John McCain, the London Daily Telegraph has published an excerpt from his book, Hard Times: Great Decision and Extraordinary People Who Made Them.

The names are tediously predictable and have been written about a million times. So, even though he had a co-writer, it can't have taken him more than ten minutes to dash off another vital entry into our literary pantheon. Uncharacteristically, he has not named himself in this list of "great achievers" who include Winston Churchill, Jackie Robinson, Abraham Lincoln, Anwar Sadat, Menachim Begin, and one woman, Channel swimmer, Gertrude Ederle.