Margaret Mahler: A Biography of the Psychoanalyst Book

This biography does a disservice to this extraordinary woman and all young adults who want to learn about her. It skips large portions of her life, despite the author's reference to Barton's journals that chronicle her life. It does not delve at all into her motivations for becoming a school teacher in Massachusetts, moving to Washington D.C. by herself to work in the patent office, or going from there to working on the battle fields of the civil war. It never explicitly states that she is working only with Union soldiers on the fields, nor does it give details as to the difficulties she faced doing work there as opposed to in the hospitals where women and nurses were supposed to be. The book lacks the flow and personal details that make biographies interesting and worth reading.