Born Bessie Lee Pittman in the Florida Panhandle, the daughter of a nomadic millwright, she erased her impoverished origins to become Jacqueline Cochran, a hairdresser at Saks Fifth Avenue who married Wall Street magnate Floyd Odlum, learned to fly in three weeks, and built the Wings to Beauty cosmetics empire. This deep dive treats her as a real-life Jay Gatsby, examining how a woman who invented her own history still made so much real history.

We trace her staggering aviation records, her command of thousands of women pilots in World War II, and the ego-driven contradictions that turned a champion of women into an obstacle for the next generation. Her drive pushed her through the sound barrier but also poisoned her view of the women who might follow her.

• Winning the grueling Bendix transcontinental race in 1938 and flying a bomber across the Atlantic in 1941
• Directing the Women Airforce Service Pilots at Sweetwater, Texas, and earning the Distinguished Service Medal in 1945
• Becoming the first woman to fly supersonic on May 18, 1953, in a borrowed Canadair Sabre, with Chuck Yeager on her wing
• Setting altitude records over 56,000 feet in a T-38 Talon in 1961
• Her puzzling 1962 testimony against the Mercury 13 women and her failed 1956 run for Congress against Dalip Singh Saund