Jennifer Keishin Armstrong tells the intersecting stories of four pivotal women who knocked down barriers as they broke new ground. Irna Phillips turned real-life tragedy into daytime soaps and featured all-women casts. Gertrude Berg turned her radio show into a Jewish family sitcom that spawned a play, a musical, an advice column, a line of house dresses, and more. Hazel Scott was the first African American to host an evening variety show. And Betty White became a daytime talk show fan favorite who would also become one of the first women to produce, write, and star in her own show. But as television was on the rise and becoming a lucrative business, the House Un-American Activities Committee came along and decimated Scott’s TV career, Berg’s show, and the careers of several other women in the industry. In the clearing, men got wise and took over the airwaves, forcing the women to fight even harder to hang on, in the face of sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, and the ongoing Red Scare.