Daring to Drive

Manal Al-Sharif grew up in Mecca as the second daughter of a taxi driver, and as a teenager she melted her brother's pop tapes in an oven, convinced that music was forbidden. Education changed her course: in her twenties she worked as a computer security engineer, one of the few women on a desert compound that looked like an American suburb. Then the contradictions of Saudi life became too much, from being insulted for talking with male colleagues to needing her teenage brother as a chaperone on a work trip and being barred from driving the car she kept in her garage. Her memoir traces how she became the unexpected leader of a campaign for women's right to drive.

Brad Feld, co-founder of Foundry Group, described it as intense, horrifying and inspiring at once, and said he hoped to thank Al-Sharif one day for having the courage to tell her story.