Tag Archives: women’s history

NetGalley Review: We the Women

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Thank you NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC of “We the Women” by Norah O’Donnell and Kate Anderson Brower, it is much appreciated!
“We the Women” offers fascinating snapshots of women history has tried to forget. Some of these women were familiar to me from my Women’s Studies classes in college as well as my own reading. Other women, such as the Revolutionary-era wax sculptor and spy Patience Lovell Wright; Civil War heroine Dr. Mary Edwards Walker; Susan and Susette La Flesche, advocates for First Nation Peoples; and the female teams of telephone switchboard operators of World War I, were completely new to me.
How is it that these and many other women featured in this book are missing from history books? I minored in Women’s Studies and never heard of some of these women. What is wrong with this society where the work of women–some in service to this country–is completely passed over so we only learn about men and their achievements (or failures and wrongdoings)? Women make up more than half of the human race globally, and yet we and our foremothers continue to struggle to be seen in the shadows.
Read this book, learn the names, and give these women their due. They helped to make this country, they helped win wars, they made lasting change.

NetGalley Review: Uncredited by Allison Tyra

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“Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work” by Allison Tyra is an excellent book. She names and credits literally hundreds of women who were not recognized or rewarded for their achievements, from art to medicine to space exploration and beyond. As an amateur scholar of women’s history (i.e. I am not a student), I recognized some of these brilliant women; others I had unsurprisingly never heard of. Tyra’s book is an epic of female experience: the struggles we face, the biases we must fight against, the acknowledgements we are denied. This book should be read by all, though there will be plenty of naysayers that will insist that “it didn’t happen that way.” (And we all know who will say things like that, don’t we?)

Allison Tyra’s book should be recognized as the very valuable work of history it is. It deserves a place in classrooms as a reference book and a history of women’s experiences and accomplishments. Read this for the information, read it just because, or read it and allow yourself to fall into rabbit holes of related history. Whatever your reason, read this.