Marcia Biederman has contributed more than 150 articles to the New York Times, writing about everything from ice dancing to automobile wheel repair. She was a staff reporter for Crain's New York Business and an editor for Chain Store Age. Her work has appeared in New York magazine, the New York Observer, and Newsday. She is the author of several books including Popovers and Candlelight: Patricia Murphy and The Rise and Fall of a Restaurant Empire, published by SUNY Press in 2018, and Scan Artist: How Evelyn Wood Convinced the World That Speed Reading Worked, published by Chicago Review Press in 2019.
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Reviews
In dramatic detail, A Mighty Force brings to life the story of Dr. Elizabeth Hayes who, true to the oath that she took as a physician, bravely fought against powerful forces on behalf of her vulnerable patients. Dr. Betty should be a household name - not only did she pave the way for improved health and wellness of miners everywhere, but she also paved the way for generations of women physicians to walk out of their clinics demanding better for their patients. - Mona Hanna-Attisha, Flint, Michigan pediatrician and author of What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City "Even though her subject's personal papers have not survived, Marcia Biederman has successfully documented the events that made Dr. Betty Hayes briefly famous as a company doctor and advocate for public health and sanitation. Biederman captures the spirit of 1945 and 1946 in A Mighty Force, which chronicles the persistence of Dr. Betty and her miners, the strategies of resistance by corporate managers and owners, and the squalid living conditions that mining families were forced to endure in unincorporated company-owned towns." - Janet Wells Greene, Ph.D., author, Cameras in the Coalfields: Photographs as Evidence for Comparative Coalfield History "An engrossing, fast-paced biography of a woman who devoted years of her life to a heroic fight against the appallingly unsanitary conditions of a mining town and the venality of its intransigent owners." -Cathy Curtis, author of A Splendid Intelligence: The Life of Elizabeth Hardwick