Women in History Books - Page 4

Joan of Arc (Penguin Lives)

Mary Gordon

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 29 Average rating: 2.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

With the passion and grace that mark her bestselling novels of women and faith, Mary Gordon contemplates one of history's earliest and most powerful female martyrs

Eternally fascinating, an enigma no less in our time than in her own, Joan of Arc has haunted Gordon's consciousness since childhood. Who was this girl who came from nowhere, supported an equivocal cause, triumphed for a scant few months, failed as a soldier, vacillated about her vision, died in agony, was refused canonization for five hundred years, yet, ponders Gordon, "stands alone in our imagination for the single-minded triumph of the she--and it must be a she--who feared nothing, knew herself right, and chosen of the Lord?"

Joan of Arc penetrates the popular cultural icon to examine the vulnerability of a woman forced by her mission into the public world of men, from her first march at the head of the French soldiery at the age of seventeen to her capture by the British in 1430, from her vilification as a witch to the formidable legacy of her struggle. Only Gordon--a storyteller the San Francisco Chronicle calls "scintillating"--could breathe life into a figure so ethereal, so puzzling, so human.

Uppity Women of Medieval Times

Vicki Leon

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 29 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

It could have been so much better 2 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

_Uppity Women of Medieval Times_ has so much potential. It is frustrating that potential is wasted. It is wonderful that women are beginning to receive the historical attention they deserve - however, flippant and downright silly historical abstracts like _Uppity Women_ do a disservice to women's history.

I can forgive the broad take on when the middle ages took place, but struggled with the author's voice, which attempts at being humourous and "fresh" (often referring to women by nicknames created by the author.) The book itself is entirely composed of one - two page summaries of the lives and "accomplishments" of women during the middle ages. That so little information is written about the women discussed is another disappointment. More depth and less breadth would have made a much better read.

The choice of women presented further detracts from the book. While many women who deserve recognition for real contributions are included such as washerwomen of the Crusades, Walladah - al Mustakfi and Sei Shonagon, there are many, many more women included who had no historical contribution whatsoever. This inclusion seriously detracts from those women who did. (Juana la Loca readily comes to mind.) A final irritation were outright historical innacuracies - for example, claiming that Nicolo Machiavelli wrote _the Prince_ for Catherine d' Medici (in 1533) - simply inexcusable in a "history" book.

A bright spot of _Uppity Women_ was its international flavor. While the vast majority of its subjects were European, women from the Near East, the Americas and Asia were also included. I would recommend this book for middle schoolers, or perhaps (as an earlier reviewer noted) as bathroom reading.

Editorial Review:

The author of Uppity Women of Ancient Times makes history sizzle once again with insightful and witty portraits and accounts of women, notorious, courageous, and unusual who both defined and defied their times. Exceptionally researched and irresistibly entertaining, Uppity Women of Medieval Times gives readers a feminist--and humorous--perspective on little-known great women of history. NPR underwriting in San Francisco & New York.

Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh

Joyce A. Tyldesley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Intriguing Historical Biography 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

With a use of the historical and archaeological evidence from various places in Egypt and beyond, an Oxford-educated Joyce Tyldesley has written a well-detailed biography book entitled "Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh." The book, as similar to her Nefertiti: Unlocking the Mystery Surrounding Egypt's Most Famous and Beautiful Queen, drives the general readers to experience and to understand the story of the female Pharaoh named Hatchepsut, her historical family background, the history of her memory after her death, and theories of historical scholars who have studied. There are eight chapters in the book with the addition of the "Introduction," which highlights Hatchepsut as a preferred King of Egypt, addresses a brief history of the Dynasty periods, and introduces Manetho who preserved the memory of Hatchepsut.

What came as interesting to which this book explores the relationship between Hatchepsut and her father, Pharaoh Tuthmosis I. There does not appeared to be any negativity between them, and was seen as very positive. Throughout the years of her rule, Hatchepsut honored her father "in every way possible" in order to preserve her direct link to Tuthmosis I as a rightful heir to Egyptian throne (p. 117-8). Since she was born to both Tuthmosis I and Queen Ahmose who were of a royal blood, Hatchepsut believed that she had a direct royal bloodline because her brother-husband, Tuthmosis II, was born to a mother who was not from a royal bloodline. Therefore, she believed that she had a right to rule Egypt regardless of what her gender was. An impression that comes to one's mind from the book is that Hatchepsut needed to rule Egypt in the honor of her father and not for her personal agenda.

Tyldesley also pointed out the creation of Hatchepsut's "divine birth" story as well the role of women in the Theban royal family as evidence for Hatchepsut to be a rightful ruler of Egypt.

The author holds the readers' interest with a clear writing and vivid understanding when it comes to historical biography and theories. The book is well-organized with the visual aspects of maps, figures, and pictures. She has presented a historical analysis that was not dry or technical, and it should be a good advantage for readers' ancient Egyptian knowledge. Tyldesley's book is recommended to both the general readers and historical scholars because the author brought forth a readable and very interesting book.

Editorial Review:

A biography drawing on archaeological and historical evidence tells of the brilliant female pharaoh who ruled Egypt for more than twenty years, but whose name and image were viciously attacked after her reign came to an end. 12,000 first printing.

Brilliant Women: 18th-Century Bluestockings

Elizabeth Eger, Lucy Peltz

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

During the 18th century a remarkable group of women formed the Bluestocking Salon, where women and men met to debate contemporary ideas and promote the life of the mind. Together, these cultural innovators helped forge new roles for women as influential thinkers, writers, and artists, and their creative achievements were publicly celebrated.

 

Richly illustrated with portraits, prints, and personal artifacts, Brilliant Women tells the story of this fascinating group of women. The authors chart the changing fortunes of the female intellectual and explore how a number of bluestocking women, such as artist Angelica Kauffmann, historian Catharine Macaulay, and early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, used portraiture to advance their work and their reputations in a period framed by the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.

 

Brilliant Women pays tribute to the friendships and achievements of these bluestocking women, presenting new information on the range of cultural activities in which they were engaged, as well as celebrating their legacy.

Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign

Katherine H Adams, Michael L Keene

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Editorial Review:

Past biographies, histories, and government documents have ignored Alice Paul's contribution to the women's suffrage movement, but this groundbreaking study scrupulously fills the gap in the historical record. Masterfully framed by an analysis of Paul's nonviolent and visual rhetorical strategies, Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign narrates the remarkable story of the first person to picket the White House, the first to attempt a national political boycott, the first to burn the president in effigy, and the first to lead a successful campaign of nonviolence.
 
Katherine H. Adams and Michael L. Keene also chronicle other dramatic techniques that Paul deftly used to gain publicity for the suffrage movement. Stunningly woven into the narrative are accounts of many instances in which women were in physical danger. Rather than avoid discussion of Paul's imprisonment, hunger strikes, and forced feeding, the authors divulge the strategies she employed in her campaign. Paul's controversial approach, the authors assert, was essential in changing American attitudes toward suffrage.

The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England

Amanda Vickery

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Academic but interesting and enlightening 4 out of 5 stars.
22 of 22 people found this review helpful.

This book reminds me of reading someone's doctoral dissertation--but that isn't meant to be an insult, just a comment on the writing style (academic). We are introduced to real women and their real situations by way of their letters and diaries. It is full of very interesting stories of a few related women in 18th century England. My only wish would be that the book could have been written to include women from other areas in England--really just more women in general. I appreciate the author's work in this under-researched area and hope it inspires more research in the future.
I have long wished that I could have lived in Jane Austen's world (with epidurals). But after reading this I realize that I would rather keep my appliances and modern medicine and my legal rights. I appreciated this book because it broke me of my misconceptions about any kind of "romantic" life of the women of this "almost leisure" class, as another reviewer called it. They were at the mercy of their husbands, their social situation and fate. Very thought provoking for a Jane Austen fan like myself.

Editorial Review:

What was the life of an eighteenth-century British genteel woman like? This lively book, based on letters, diaries, and account books of over one hundred middle class women, transforms our understanding of the position of women in Georgian England. These women were not confined in their homes but enjoyed expanding horizons and an array of emerging public arenas, the author shows.

Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books and New Testament

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

Editorial Review:

Since the 1960s many biblical scholars have studied the Bible with a focus on gender. Yet such research is only slowly reaching a wide audience beyond the academy. Seven years in the making, centuries overdue, Women in Scripture is the groundbreaking work that will finally open this field to readers of all backgrounds -- Jews, Christians, and everyone fascinated by a body of literature that has exerted a singular influence on Western civilization.
The editors have taken on the ambitious task of identifying every woman and group of women mentioned in the Bible, whether named or unnamed, well known or heretofore not known at all. The result is more than eight hundred articles, written by the finest scholars in the field, that examine the numerous women who have often been obscured by the androcentric nature of the biblical record and by centuries of translation and interpretation that have paid little or no attention to them. At last, Women in Scripture gives these women their due.
They are remarkably varied -- from prophets to prostitutes, military heroines to musicians, deacons to dancers, widows to wet nurses, rulers to slaves. There are familiar faces, such as Eve, Judith, and Mary, seen anew with the full benefit of the most up-to-date results of biblical scholarship. But the most innovative aspect of this book is the section devoted to the many women who in the scriptures do not even have names.
Both in scope and accessibility, Women in Scripture is an exceptional work. Combining rigorous scholarship with engaging prose, each of these articles on women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, and the New Testament will inform, delight, and challenge readers interested in the Bible, scholars and laypeople alike. Together, these articles create a volume that takes the study of women in the Bible to a new level.

Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America

Karenna Gore Schiff

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Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

I am disappointed!!! 1 out of 5 stars.
5 of 24 people found this review helpful.

Any college student can write a book as this-- I'd rather read an Encyclopedia!!!

Editorial Review:

Karenna Gore Schiff’s nationally bestselling narrative tells the fascinating stories of nine influential women, who each in her own way, tackled inequity and advocated change throughout the turbulent twentieth century.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who was born a slave and fought against lynching; Mother Jones, an Irish immigrant who organized coal miners and campaigned against child labor; Alice Hamilton, who pushed for regulation of industrial toxins; Frances Perkins, who developed key New Deal legislation; Virginia Durr, who fought the poll tax and segregation; Septima Clark, who helped to register black voters; Dolores Huerta, who organized farm workers; Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias, an activist for reproductive rights; and Gretchen Buchenholz, one of the nation’s leading child advocates.

Gore Schiff delivers an intimate and accessible account of the nine trail-blazing women who deserve not only to be honored but to have their example serve as beacons.

Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco

Judy Yung

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The crippling custom of footbinding is the thematic touchstone for Judy Yung's engrossing study of Chinese American women during the first half of the twentieth century. Using this symbol of subjugation to examine social change in the lives of these women, she shows the stages of "unbinding" that occurred in the decades between the turn of the century and the end of World War II.
The setting for this captivating history is San Francisco, which had the largest Chinese population in the United States. Yung, a second-generation Chinese American born and raised in San Francisco, uses an impressive range of sources to tell her story. Oral history interviews, previously unknown autobiographies, both English- and Chinese-language newspapers, government census records, and exceptional photographs from public archives and private collections combine to make this a richly human document as well as an illuminating treatise on race, gender, and class dynamics.
While presenting larger social trends Yung highlights the many individual experiences of Chinese American women, and her skill as an oral history interviewer gives this work an immediacy that is poignant and effective. Her analysis of intraethnic class rifts--a major gap in ethnic history--sheds important light on the difficulties that Chinese American women faced in their own communities. Yung provides a more accurate view of their lives than has existed before, revealing the many ways that these women--rather than being passive victims of oppression--were active agents in the making of their own history.

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Norton Critical Editions)

Margaret Fuller

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Seminal early US survey of Women's Rights & Women's History 4 out of 5 stars.
22 of 23 people found this review helpful.

Margaret Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century [1845]is one of the first US books that looked at the whole sweep of world history from a woman's point of view. It was based on her article that she'd written for the Dial magazine [which she'd edited along with Emerson]called the "Great Lawsuit". This book is than one of the basic works that formed and influenced the Women's Rights Movement in the US. The famous early US women's rights meeting held in Seneca Falls, NY. came just a few years after this book. Fuller's view of women throughout the ages also provides an historical perspective to the political and philosophical views of Mary Wollstonecraft's: The Vindication of the Rights of Women[1792]. But, this work is also interesting because of its international and cross-cultural perspective. And this Norton Critical edition is also preferable because unlike most [it not all] of the available editions it reprints the 1845 edition. This was the only one that Fuller herself prepared for publication. Most of the other editions continue to reprint later editions especially the 1855 edition which was prepared by Fuller's brother and included his own editing of the text. The Norton edition is further enhanced by a useful introduction, good notes and essays on the work. Until there is a much needed complete & scholarly edition of all of Fuller's works [or even a Library of America edition of Fuller's works]to match the recent complete edition of her letters this is the best available edition of Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century.

Editorial Review:

About the Series: Each Norton Critical Edition includes an authoritative text, contextual and source materials, and a wide range of interpretations-from contemporary perspectives to the most current critical theory-as well as a bibliography and, in most cases, a chronology of the author's life and work.