Solid historical travelogue/biography, with plenty of scandal and adventure. I enjoyed reading about the expat experience in China, and seeing what was familiar and what was very different from my China years. Not every character is likeable, but that's real life, isn't it?

Nobody Said Not to Go: The Life, Loves, and Adventures of Emily Hahn is an interesting thing. It's a written biography of a woman who, over the course of her long career (she published more than 50 books), wrote practically non-stop about her life, her travels, and her experiences.

When I was asked to read and review the ebook release of Nobody Said Not to Go, my first thought was, Why read a biography about her when I could just read her books? The only answer that satisfied me was the idea that a good biographer will provide much needed context for a modern audience while craftily reducing the stories into an overarching picture of their subject.

In that regard, Ken Cuthbertson excels at giving the reader a clear understanding of the social world Emily "Mickey" Hahn lived and moved in, and how exactly remarkable she was as a feminist trailblazer. Through exhaustive interviews with Ms. Hahn as well as a thorough reading of her body of work, Cuthbertson takes the juiciest bits from her autobiographical work and boils it down into the essence of Mickey Hahn's life -- her motivations, her mistakes, her successes, and her shortcomings (acknowledged and not) -- creating an engaging tale of her heroics and heartaches.

If you're looking for an inspirational biography that tells the story of a kickass woman, from childhood to retirement, you can't go wrong with Nobody Said Not to Go. If nothing else, it's a great overview to have on hand while reading one of her many other books about her time in Central Africa, China, and India, as well as her early life in the United States.