This volume is a biography about Israeli politician Golda Meir (1898-1978), who became that country's first female prime minister. In this account, the author strips away Meir's tough-minded politician's exterior to expose a lonely, tender-hearted woman, aching for love. Emphasizing her inadequacies as a wife and mother and cataloging her alleged lovers, he traces Meir's life through 1948. The narrative follows feisty "Goldie" from her first eight years in Kiev where she was born in 1898 to Milwaukee's lower west side where her family settled, through her early Zionist activity in Denver, her migration to Palestine and her increasingly prominent role as champion of Israeli statehood.