Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her [Hardcover]

Robin Gerber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 3, 2009

The tragic and redeeming story of how one visionary woman built the biggest toy company in the world and created a global icon.

Barbie and Ruth is the entwined story of two exceptional women. There's Barbie: the diminutive yet arrestingly voluptuous doll unveiled at the 1959 Toy Fair who became the treasure of 90 percent of American girls and their counterparts in 150 countries. She went on to compete as an Olympic athlete, serve as an air force pilot, work as a boutique owner, run as a presidential candidate, and ignite a cultural firestorm.

And then there's Ruth Handler, Barbie's creator: the tenth child of Polish Jewish immigrants, a passionately competitive and creative business pioneer, and a mother and wife who wanted it all. After a business scandal that forced Ruth out of Mattel, the company she founded, she drew on her experience as a breast cancer survivor to start a business that changed women's lives. She was ultimately honored as a pioneer, humanitarian, and masterful entrepreneur.

Based on original research, extensive interviews, and previously unavailable material, Barbie and Ruth tells the fascinating story of how two women forever changed American business and culture.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Cofounder of the Mattel Company, Ruth Handler and her husband, Elliot, turned the toy industry upside down, not only with the 1959 creation of Barbie and the subsequent introduction of boyfriend Ken but also with Hot Wheels and prescient advertising tie-ins to the Mickey Mouse Club. Yet the behind-the-scenes journey is just as fascinating as the public persona: born the tenth child of Polish-Jewish immigrants, Ruth was raised by her sister—and, early on, recognized the talent of her husband as a designer. Motherhood was not her natural state of being, though she named both dolls after her children. After being forced out of Mattel in the 1970s, Ruth then founded a second company, “Nearly Me,” producing prosthetics designed for women who had undergone mastectomies—just like her. Tragedy, unfortunately, continued to strike the family; son Ken died of AIDS in 1994, and Ruth herself lost her battle with cancer in 2002. Despite the research, Handler seems to have a two-dimensional luster, rather than the pioneering and dynamic businesswoman seen in other articles and books. Nonetheless, a fascinating account of entrepreneurial ups and downs. --Barbara Jacobs

Review

“This stirring biography is a fine study of success and resilience.” (Publishers Weekly )

“Barbie and her creator, the sharp-elbowed gal who built the biggest toy company, have a story to tell.” (Time magazine )

“Gerber’s smoothly-written biography paints a fearless business woman as a devoted wife, a too-busy mother and a rock-‘em-sock-‘em executive.” (New York Post )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: HarperBusiness; First Edition edition (February 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061341312
• ISBN-13: 978-0061341311
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #587,400 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robin Gerber is a national commentator and speaker on leadership, and the author of Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way: Timeless Strategies from the First Lady of Courage (Penguin/Portfolio, 2002) and Katharine Graham: The Leadership Journey of an American Icon with a foreword by Jim Collins, author of Good to Great (Penguin/Portfolio, October, 2005). Her books are used in leadership development courses and corporate programs across the United States. She is also a lawyer and senior faculty for the Gallup Organization, and a senior fellow in Executive Education at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park.

A member of the Board of Contributors for the opinion pages of USA Today, and a columnist for Reader's Digest, Robin also publishes frequently in other national newspapers. She has been a commentator on NPR's Marketplace and Morning Edition, and has appeared on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer and dozens of radio talk shows.

Robin is an inspirational keynote speaker on leadership development, using moving stories from the lives of Eleanor Roosevelt, Katharine Graham and other great leaders to illustrate leadership lessons.

Her clients include Bank of America, IBM, Marriott, Legg Mason, JP Morgan/Chase, Freddie Mac, Aetna Information Services, the AARP, Lee Hecht Harrison, Giant Food, The Culinary Institute, West Point, the U.S. Forest Service, the Council for Excellence in Government, The 3rd Quality Conference of the European Union, and many universities, colleges, girls' schools, nonprofits and government agencies. She also has a select client list for executive coaching. Prior to becoming an author, Robin practiced law in Washington, D.C. and worked on Capitol Hill. She has studied and written about leadership development since 1975.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Barbie and Ruth, February 19, 2009

By 

Rossina Gil "Girl Power" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her (Hardcover)

I was an employee of Mattel during the time of Jill Barad's "reign." This book by Ms. Gerber completely puts into context the Mattel culture that evolved from its founder. Ruth Handler was an intriguing blend of an entrepreneur who carved the way for others and someone who complacently towed the line of gender-based expectations. For example, she was the keynote speaker at a men's club, but while her husband was escorted the proper way to the room assigned for her engagement, she was taken by way of the kitchen and garbage. Most importantly, while no one can underestimate the unfathomable wealth she accumulated due to her business acumen, her true successes came post-Mattel but most probably would not have been achieved without it. She helped survivors of mastectomies re-gain their self-esteem, re-connected with her children, inspired legions of executive women et al, and supported troubled youths. As a sort of B-story, I found it amusing that while Ruth's son Ken (who struggled with his sexuality) resented his name having been given to the Ken doll, the doll is well-received by the gay community. Ms. Gerber is indeed a masterful storyteller.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Inside Information, February 6, 2009

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her (Hardcover)

Barbie and Ruth is primarily the story of Ruth, and Barbie isn't in it as much as I'd like, but I will say that Ruth Handler makes a great subject.

She was driven and that's the word for her. Married to a man she considered a genius, she moved heaven and earth to make his toys happen, and after awhile, she began enjoying the power of being one of the few female toy executives. Her own two children, Barbie and Ken, were brought up almost in absentia, even though their Los Angeles home was designed and decorated within an inch of its life, including many factors ordinary children could only dream about having--such as a live tree growing up along the staircase, and a operating soda fountain in the basement! And still they were dissatisfied with their lives.

So was Ruth, and the book goes to great pains to show how Ruth's dissatisfactions led her down the primrose path of crime, so that idiotically she risked her company's future by participating in an ill thought out plan to conceal losses and to protect its credit during some lean times, by inflating to its stockholders the amount of profit Mattel was making. After years in court, she saw defeat, yet by this time she had another enemy to surmount--breast cancer, which for a woman who had always prided herself on her figure, was especially devastating. She did not take cancer lying down and instead started a new company with a feminist consciousness--Nearly Me, which developed and manufactured breast prosthetics from a female point of view. This part of the story was inspiring.

Forty-five "overt acts" of fraud were mentioned in the indictment, as her enemies rejoiced how the mighty had fallen. A lie detector test helped clear her beloved Elliott of any charges.

Anyone interested in the toy business might find BARBIE AND RUTH to be just the book they were looking for. So many inside facts I had never accounted for! For example, Mattel succeeded where others failed because it owned no factory equipment and merely outsourced all of its physical requirements to other, smaller firms--neoliberalism at an peak. And also why even a great toy like the little 17-key "grand piano" Mattel pioneered was doomed to fail, because it was made of so many contrasting materials that it was bound to roll up huge deficits from breakage in shipping--who'd a thunk it?

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging From Start to Finish, February 18, 2009

By 

Jamie Woolf "Jamie" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her (Hardcover)

Who knew that the creator of the Barbie doll was a felon, a cancer survivor, a daughter of Jewish immigrants, a founder of Mattel, and that the real Ken that inspired the Ken doll was a victim of HIV and resented the materialism and negative effect of the doll that bore his name. It's an absolutely riveting and fascinating story. I couldn't put it down. Gerber's command of story telling helps us to understand Ruth Handler, scorn her, sympathize with her, and learn from her successes and failures. I'm surprised there was so little known about this pioneering woman behind the doll that we all know and love or hate. I loved this book from start to finish.