Description: Marie Brenner's Great Dames broke barriers, they had fierce ambitions and egos, and lived up to their own sense of destiny. Constance Baker Motley, who argued Brown v. Board of Education, is a profile in courage, warring against race hate. The ethereal and unpredictable Luise Rainer won two Academy Awards by the age of 30, then fled Hollywood, determined to rebel against any form of domination. Bess Myerson, the first Jewish Miss America, faced down personal scandal. The sunniest of the women, Kitty Carlisle Hart, a professional charmer and tireless advocate for the arts started her morning by smiling at herself in the mirror. "Kitty, I forgive you", she told herself. There are the Becky Sharps who used powerful men for their ascent: Marietta Tree, Pamela Harriman, Clare Booth Luce. And the flamboyantly eccentric Kay Thompson, creator of Eloise; Jacqueline Onassis, happiest in her last decade; Diana Trilling, the intellectual's intellectual, who published her final splendid memoir at the age of 91. And finally, Marie's mother, Thelma, with her own ambitions and personal mythology. She was Marie's first teacher.

Nine of these portraits appeared in Vanity Fair and Vogue. The Diana Trilling and Thelma Brenner pieces are written especially for "Great Dames".

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