"Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History Making Race Around the World" (Ballantine Books), by Matthew Goodman

Americans have always loved a good race. From the Kentucky Derby to the Indianapolis 500, it's part of our DNA to crown the fastest. In his book "Eighty Days," Matthew Goodman tells the story of two pioneering female journalists who raced each other 28,000 miles around the globe in 1889. One woman went east. The other went west. For more than two months, readers followed the women as they battled storms, snow and delays until one got back to New York City first.

The competition didn't start as a race. It started as a stunt. To boost its circulation, Joseph Pulitzer's "The World" newspaper dispatched its star investigative journalist, Nellie Bly, off to circumnavigate the globe in 75 days. If she made it, she would beat the fictional record set by Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne's 1873 novel, "Around the World in 80 Days."