In the late 1890s, an elderly woman at Massachusetts General Hospital refused anesthesia for brain surgery, asked the surgeons for a bullet, bit down, and endured the saw fully conscious. That was Harriet Tubman, and the image has nothing in common with the gentle schoolbook hero most of us were handed. Born Araminta Ross around 1822 in Dorchester County, Maryland, she was hired out as a nursemaid at five and whipped when the baby cried, sent to wade freezing marshes checking muskrat traps while sick with measles. As a teenager she took a two-pound metal weight to the skull for refusing to help an overseer restrain another enslaved man, and lay bleeding and unconscious for two days without care. The injury left her with lifelong pain and sudden spells of unshakable sleep. It also brought vivid visions she read as direct messages from God, and tha ...