Not the sanitized version — the real one. Florence Nightingale, the ferocious statistical reformer who fought the military establishment from her own sickbed for fifty years. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who worked himself to death at fifty-three refusing to accept that "possible" set any limit. Mary Seacole, turned away four times, who paid her own way to the Crimean War and built her own hospital under fire. Charles Darwin, sitting on the secret of a lifetime for twenty years because he was afraid of what it would cost him.

These aren't hagiographies — Nightingale dismissed Seacole; Darwin's fear nearly buried his own discovery. But running through every chapter is the same thread: the refusal to accept the situation as given. This is a book about what it looks like when people choose the harder thing — and, unexpectedly, a book about what we've kept from that age, and what we've lost.