With an emphasis on the qualities that have fostered strong nursing leadership, this book provides a unique perspective on the lives and achievements of the most revered nurses throughout history. It is comprised of biographies of many of nursing’s most important activist agents of change, with a focus on those characteristics that enabled them to accomplish their goals and implement changes that improved nursing, health, health care, and society. The first biography described in the book is of Florence Nightingale who achieved great social reform, designed hospitals, created medical recording systems, developed statistical approaches for public health management (in wartime as in peacetime), and designed a standardized nursing curriculum eventually used in training schools internationally. Mother Mary Frances Aikenhead decided to follow God’s call and offer her service as a nun and, in Ireland, led the ministry of caring for the poor during the devastating cholera epidemic. During the American Civil War, Clara Barton’s fame became so widespread that admirers across the country were eager to hear about her work. Margaret Higgins Sanger was a strong advocate for the cervical cap and diaphragm as birth control methods but had to overcome a number of obstacles before she could bring this method to the United States. The book also describes the work of Sister Elizabeth Kenny, Clara Louise Maass, Dorothea Lynde Dix, Lillian D. Wald, Mary Breckinridge, and Edith Louisa Cavell.