In the fall of 1983, a handful of women ate Chinese takeout in a tiny Washington, D.C. apartment, half of them seated on folding chairs. Each of the fortune cookies had been threaded with customized slips that hinted at the real reason the women were there: to get the first woman nominated as vice president by a major party. 

“You will win big in ’84,” read the piece of paper inside Queens congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro’s cookie. The third-term representative, a second-generation Italian-American, was the evening’s guest of honor; the other women had concluded she was the right woman to do the glass-shattering. Their question to Ferraro: Was she game?