Women in History Books - Page 3

The Subjection of Women (Dover Thrift Editions)

John Stuart Mill

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Mill's Best Work 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

The Subjection of Women is an often overlooked classic by one of history's greatest minds. Published at the end of Mill's life, The Subjection brings together all of Mill's most important views on liberty, utility, human nature, and society. It paints a far more accessable ethic than more famous works, such as On Liberty. Mill uses his philosophical views to reach conclusions that were long ahead of his time, and in many ways continue to outpace our understanding of gender and society. This work is arguably the best feminist writing ever, and the best commentary on morality and social evolution.

Today, Mill's work continues to provide us with a framework for understanding social movements such as the gay rights and animal rights movements. Mill shows us how just institutions are vital to the happiness of both society and the individual, as these institutions are central to the formation of our characters. He shows us how both the oppressor and the oppressed are harmed by unjust institutional arrangements, such as gender inequalities in the family. In sum, Mill's The Subjection of Women is perhaps the finest piece of social and political philosophy produced in the modern era, and should be read by all interested in social justice, feminism, or ethics.

Editorial Review:

Influential essay by great English philosopher argues for equality in all legal, political, social and domestic relations between men and woman. Carefully reasoned and clearly expressed with great logic and consistency, the work remains a landmark in the struggle for human rights.

Women Travelers: A Century of Trailblazing Adventures 1850-1950

Alexandra Lapierre

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

An award-winning novelist brings to life the stories of the greatest women adventurers in history. From deserts and jungles to mountains and icebergs, they faced unimaginable dangers as they crossed all five continents, often armed with little more than a corset and an umbrella. Spanning a decade, this book mixes triumph and tragedy. The featured women include Fanny Vandegrift, the wife of Robert Louis Stevenson, who ventured all the way from Indiana to Samoa, and Nellie Bly, journalist and social reformer, who went around the world in seventy-two days. The thirty-one women celebrated here hail from fourteen countries and traveled to the farthest reaches of our planet. Twice as brave as their male counterparts, in the face of social convention, these women set off into the unknown. Their bold journeys across the globe had long-lasting effects on the role and status of women in society, and they made important contributions to disciplines as varied as medicine, archeology, and anthropology.

Joan of Arc: In her own words

Joan of Arc

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Maid speaks.... 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

I bought this book several years ago and it is one purchase that I do not regret. Wonderful for grabbing a thought, it often ends up in the pile of my inspirational books. There is nothing like a word from Joan before facing the day. As history, it is an excellent tool from which to derive direct quotations from one of the greatest enigmas of all time. JOAN OF ARC: IN HER OWN WORDS puts the reader in contact with the mind of the saint and the events which she faced so courageously. Her boldness, her femininity, her adandonment and her triumph are all there.

Compelling 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Reading Jehanne's own words is simply an amazing experience. The way the book is written, you can almost hear her speaking with all the passion & fervor she posessed. Reading this book is like being there, back in time, actually watching & hearing all as it happens.

Defective copy 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 7 people found this review helpful.

I read this right after buying it, but it was published in 1996 and the publisher apparently went out of business in 1997. I would like to know whether it is my copy or the entire edition that is defective - the Notes end in mid-word ("Excluded with then are passages merely rou-") on p.147! Then p.148 is blank, and there is no p.149/150, after which the pagination resumes with p.151.

Editorial Review:

complete transcripts, Joan's autobiography

Women in Ancient Greece

Susan Blundell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

To read the history of ancient Greece as it has been written for centuries is to enter a thoroughly male world. This book, a comprehensive history of women in the Archaic and Classical Ages, completes our picture of ancient Greek society.

Largely excluded from any public role, the women of ancient Greece nonetheless appear in various guises in the art and writing of the period, and in legal documents. These representations, in Sue Blundell's analysis, reveal a great deal about women's day-to-day experience as well as their legal and economic position--and how they were regarded by men. Here are women as portrayed in Homer, in Greek lyric poetry, and by the playwrights; the female nature as depicted in medical writings and by Aristotle; representations of women in sculpture and vase paintings. This is evidence filtered through a male view: Sappho is the only female writer of antiquity much of whose work survives. Yet these sources and others such as regulations and law court speeches reveal a great deal about women's lives and about their status as defined by law and by custom.

By examining the roles that men assigned to women, the ideals they constructed for them, and the anxieties they expressed about them, Blundell sheds light on the cultural dynamics of a male-dominated society. Lively and richly illustrated, her work offers a fresh look at women in the ancient world.

Daughters of Isis: Women of Ancient Egypt (Penguin history)

Joyce A. Tyldesley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Fascinating look at ancient Egyptian women! 5 out of 5 stars.
21 of 21 people found this review helpful.

From the moment I began reading this wonderful book, I was hooked! Joyce Tyldesley draws you in with her evocative narrative and transports you to a time and place often romanticized by modern Western culture. She "sets the record straight" and tells the reader, based on current archaeological evidence, what women's lives were like 3,000 years ago in Egypt. The great thing about this book is that it's written with the average reader in mind (in other words, in plain English), so you don't have to have a Ph.D in Egyptology to understand it. Tyldesley discusses every aspect of women's lives, from what makeup they used, how they dressed, what they ate, and their daily household duties. She describes women from every social class--from the poor all the way up to royalty. The author does a good job of presenting available evidence and making objective interpretations, not assumptions as many archaeologists have in the past. She constantly points out throughout the book how little is actually known about women's lives, since Egyptian history was recorded by men. Even the ever-present wall paintings which adorn tombs and temples present Egyptian life in an idealized manner, so it is often hard to deduce what is real and what is fantasy.

The book includes a plethora of photographs and illustrations which act as effective visual aides to the text. The well-organized timeline in the back of the book was also very helpful, and I found myself referring to it often just to keep track of the time periods and which pharaoh came when. This was a very enjoyable book which I had a hard time putting down. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in ancient women's history.

Editorial Review:

In ancient Egypt women enjoyed a legal, social and sexual independence unrivalled by their Greek or Roman sisters, or in fact by most women until the late nineteenth century. They could own and trade in property, work outside the home, marry foreigners and live alone without the protection of a male guardian. Some of them even rose to rule Egypt as 'female kings'. Joyce Tyldesley's vivid history of how women lived in ancient Egypt weaves a fascinating picture of daily life - marriage and the home, work and play, grooming and religion - viewed from a female perspective, in a work that is engaging, original and constantly surprising.

A History of Women in the West, Volume IV, Emerging Feminism from Revolution to World War

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A historical vision of women, at last 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

"Our ambition is grandiose," writes editor Pauline Schmitt Pantel. And why not? This book's editors and authors are building a historical record for better than half--or do I mean the better half?--of all humans descended from Greece and Rome. "A History of Women in the West, Volume 1" is full of the challenges our forebears had to debate. Take the first chapter: "What is a Goddess?" asks, "Is a goddess's femininity of the same kind found in mortal women or of a different, more intense kind?" (p.14). "Maternity was destiny," asserts another among many (mostly female) contributing authors, "as it was to all women prior to the advent of modern medicine" (p.298).

"A History of Women in the West" gives a voice to females who came before, albeit an uneven voice. "We will have nothing to say about important periods of history," the editor warns, or about periods well covered elsewhere. So "A History of Women in the West" is not a general survey. Rather, this book explores the more prominent bumps on the sometimes barely discernable trace that measures the female pulse in history from classical times.

"At one time a history of women would have seemed an inconceivable or futile undertaking," write general editors Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot. "The roles for which women were destined were silent ones: motherhood and homemaking." There were exceptions: "No tragedy was complete without a chorus of women in tears." (See Duby's "Women of the Twelfth Century" trilogy, Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3.)

"A History of Women in the West" attempts and delivers a vast vision, from earth mothers to Engels. Midway between its covers--("Body Politics in Ancient Rome")--we learn that doctors advised wealthy families to bind the hips of newborn boys to produce a tight pelvis, but to leave girls' hips unbound--easing eventual childbirth and enhancing young women's allure. The means to achieving that end have changed through time, but the motive, never.

General readers, take note! This book is eminently readable, but it is not easy. It succeeds as a volume of broad reach and high-minded scholarship without coming across as overly academic. First published in Italian, it benefits from an excellent English translation by Arthur Goldhammer, giving it a lighter, more fluent tone than one comes to expect from native English-speaking academics penning jargon in the passive voice. Goldhammer's even, readable style shines. So does "A History of Women in the West," which entertains and fascinates, suiting general readers who want to explore it in sections rather than read a long volume from cover to cover.

Robert Fripp
Author, "Power of a Woman. Memoirs of...Eleanor of Aquitaine"

Editorial Review:

The French Revolution opened a whole new stage in the history of women, despite their conspicuous absence from the playbill. The coming century would see women's subordination to men codified in all manner of new laws and rules; and yet the period would also witness the birth of feminism, the unprecedented emergence of women as a collective force in the political arena. The fourth volume in this world-acclaimed series covers the distance between these two poles, between the French Revolution and World War I. It gives us a vibrant picture of a bourgeois century, dynamic and expansive, in which the role of woman in the home was stressed more and more, even as the economic pressures and opportunities of the industrial revolution drew her out of the house; in which woman's growing role in the family as the center of all morals and virtues pressed her into public service to fight social ills.

Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861-1868 (Library of Southern Civilization)

Kate Stone

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

An Extraordinary Lady in Extraordinary Times 5 out of 5 stars.
57 of 57 people found this review helpful.

Kate Stone is one of my favorite Civil War diarists. She is an admixture of a great privilege, passionate beliefs, lover of literature, keen social observations and amazing fortitude. Her Civil War was dangerous, turbulent and life changing.

Brokenburn was a large plantation containing over 150 slaves in Madison Parish, LA. From 1862 on, it was in the center of the Union Army's fierce assault to gain control of the Mississippi River and divide the Confederacy in half. Plantations were commandeered and slaves were encouraged to revolt. The civilian population was helpless before the demands of military control. Madison Parish had a population of approximately 9,000 of whom 7,000 were slaves. After 1861, the Parish was emptied of able-bodied white men, most of whom had been sent to far-off Virginia and Tennessee, leaving none to protect the civilians.

In 1861, Kate was 20 years old, her immediate future being beaus, courtship, and a gay social life before she settled down to become a proper southern matron. She was unsure whether this route was ideal, as she remarked, "women grew significantly uglier in wedlock and ignored and abandoned their former female friends." This comfortable world was turned upside down, never to reappear again. With great enthusiasm and some trepidation, she watched her three older brothers go off to war. Her widowed mother made it clear that 14-year-old James was now in charge of the running of the plantation and the protection of the rest of the family. I was amazed at the serene assumption that a young teenager was thrust in this role, but it seems that was the custom of the times. If you had to grow up fast, you did. Yellow fever was a constant in the area, and longevity was not a norm. Both Generals Grant and Lee wanted their troops out of these areas during "the seasons of pestilence." This was not to be, and both armies suffered devastating losses to disease. Kate treated the "fever season" as a fact of life, and planned around it with remarkable briskness.

By 1862, the Stone family was desperate. The Federal leadership demanded that they stay on their property; yet there were serious slave insurrections that threatened the lives of the plantation holders. Those slaves who were not hostile were running off, and there was no labor to farm the crops. Many southerners could not believe that their "loyal" slaves would run away. Kate was not among them, saying, "If I were in their place, I'd do the same." She was by no means sympathetic, just practical.

The family finally escaped through the bayous in a rickety canoe with nothing, not even underwear, and finally made it across the border into Texas. They were refugees along with many other prominent Louisiana families. Kate was convinced they had arrived at "a dark corner of the Confederacy." Upon noting the barefoot but hoop skirted frontier ladies, she sniffed "there must be something in the air of Texas fatal to beauty."

Kate agonized over the increasingly bad war news and was devastated by Lee's surrender. Kate is one of the most vivid, perceptive diarists of the Civil War. Her diary is one of social history, a time of calamitous change and invaluable for understanding this crucial time in American history. Kate is a natural writer and observer. A highly enjoyable read.

Jackie Handbook

Naomi West, Catherine Wilson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Jackie OH 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

A must have for any "Jackie" fan. Fabulous pictures and text. Just when you think you know everything about Jackie there is MORE. Fabulous read.

Editorial Review:

Just who was Jackie Onassis? Everyone knows that she was a president's wife, who saw him shot dead in front of her, a doting mother and a reclusive widow who married the richest man in the world. In "Jackie Handbook", Naomi West and Catherine Wilson venture behind Jackie's trademark dark glasses and regal bearing to reveal the insecurities, the playfulness, the wit, loyalty to friends and the ruthlessness with enemies of a woman who seemed more a figure from 18th Century Versailles than from 20th century America.

The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War

George L. Hicks

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Not the best author... 2 out of 5 stars.
19 of 24 people found this review helpful.

This is a very important subject to learn about. However, I did not enjoy Hick's style of writing. He is over dramatic at times, "Japan remains an international outcast, an economic superpower which comands respect but which has few, if any, friends in either East or West" (p.275), and he does not cite any of his quotations or sources. I would have liked to read up more on his sources, but they are not there. I often wondered where he got his translations from too.

Not that I am trying to downplay the comfort women issue. Hicks makes a good attempt at trying to cover it, but his writing is really convoluted and boring. The personal story clips were very revealing, but again, where did he get them from?

Try a different author on the subject, one who is more professional about their writings.

Editorial Review:

Reveals how the Japanese military forced more than one hundred thousand women into involuntary prostitution, the devastating impact on these women's lives, the official Japanese cover-up, and the painful testimonies of how many women survived and found the courage to tell their stories.

Five Sisters: The Langhornes of Virginia

James Fox

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The author of the bestseller "White Mischief" tells the story of the beautiful Langhorne sisters, who lived at the Pinnacle of high and powerful society from the end of the Civil War through the Second World War. Making their way across two continents, they left in their wakes rich husbands, fame, adoration, and scandal. Lizzie, Irene, Nancy, Phyllis, and Nora were born in Virginia to a family impoverished by the Civil War. Their father remade his fortune by collaborating with the Yankees and building rail-roads; the sisters became southern belles and northern debutantes. James Fox draws on unpublished correspondence between the sisters and their husbands, lovers, children, and the powerful and glamorous of their day to construct a plural topography with the scope of a grand novel and the pace of a historical thriller. At its center is the most famous sister, Nancy, who married Waldorf Astor, one of the richest men in the world. Heroic, hilarious, magnetically charming, and a bully, Lady Astor became Britain's first female MP, championing women's rights and the poor. The beautiful Irene married Charles Dana Gibson and was the model for the Gibson Girl. The author's grandmother, Phyllis, married a famous economist, one of the architects of modern Europe. Fox has written an absorbing and spirited, intimate and sweeping account of extraordinary women at the highest reaches of society, their adventures set against the background of a tumultuous century.