FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE: Founder of Modern Nursing

At night ""a 'ministering angel'. . . making her solitary rounds,"" by day a proud and difficult woman to deal with. This is very similar to the depiction in Woodham-Smith's Lonely Crusader, but ""the Bird"" emerges as less prone to ""visions"" and even more quarrel-some, especially with close friends. Demanding, resourceful, the epitome of the organizer, Florence Nightingale did buck the wishes of her family when she entered nursing, but there was more than a ""call"" involved: the crusading woman was in vogue and although she was not part of any suffrage movement, she did have an image of the romantic heroine, an aspect overlooked in this biography. Otherwise, it's reliable if less discerning than the Woodham-Smith version.