Warrior Queens

Rating:
Summary: If Women Ran The World...
Review: Enjoyable popular history from the My Word panelist.

Rating:
Summary: Boadicea's Chariot
Review: Lady Fraser's book is an excellent treatment of her topic. I was concerned that it might be too politically correct, but in fact she has examined the ways in which women have accepted and cemented positions of power. Her analysis treats on a wide historical range and does not limit itself to the familiar figures: Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria, etc. Her style is informative but not difficult and pleasant without being overly colloquial. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in how women present themselves in order to attain and hold power and to people interested in learning more about some histories they would probably not otherwise come across.

Rating:
Summary: If Women Ran The World...
Review: Let this scene from the revolt of Boudicca fire your imagination: "the captured Roman women had their breasts sliced off and sewn to their faces so it would appear they were eating them; then they were skewered alive and strung up longways." No surprise that the career of Margaret Thatcher inspired this work.

Rating:
Summary: If Women Ran The World...
Review: Let this scene from the revolt of Boudicca fire your imagination: "the captured Roman women had their breasts sliced off and sewn to their faces so it would appear they were eating them; then they were skewered alive and strung up longways." No surprise that the career of Margaret Thatcher inspired this work.

Rating:
Summary: An attempted read
Review: Perhaps I expected more from this book than was present, but I could hardly get through the first few chapters and I am an avid historic biography reader. I found her methods tiresome and boring, having the preference to recite found facts rather than compile and share, she reads like a card catalog. I now know exactly what to read if I do wish to learn something of these women she eludes to, but after having put this book down, I feel I am less wise to the subjects then when I started. I need a chronological telling of a person and their movement, not a forty-three page explanation of exactly who has written such things in the past. Perhaps, I stopped reading three or four chapters before it got good, but I doubt it. I was very disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Boadicea to Margaret Thatcher
Review: This book, like many by Antonia Fraser, was very entertaining and quite thrilling. There was a British bias but it helped to frame the book and there were many side journeys to other nations to keep this journey fascinating.

What was most interesting was how the various women used being women to their advantage as well as how their enemies also used their femaleness against them. Antonia Fraser weaves all these women together but clearly presents their differences. They are all linked by being women but it is shown how that very similarity can be so differently used and percieved by all these various warriors. The inidivduals that come out of this story are unique and interesting. It is these vivid brief portraits that carry this book along. Well done.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting subject matter, however...
Review: This is a series of essays on female leadership, and mens' reaction to it, by the renowned author Lady Antonia Fraser. Though it purports to center about the legendary Briton queen Boadicea, the "elephant sitting in the corner" throughout the whole account is the former PM Margaret Thatcher. The Iron Lady makes an overt appearance in the final chapter but her specter looms in the earlier chapters about such rulers as Zenobia, the Palmryan Queen who fought Aurelian, or Elizabeth I, the red-headed Virgin Queen. Fraser is very clever at identifying some of the vices and syndromes, many of them contradictory, that have clustered around female rulers, including the "Voracity Syndrome" - the theory that women in power are sex-crazy. Only Tsarina Catherine II (the "Great") truly matches that description; most, such as Cleopatra, were one-man women, despite their detractors' rhetoric. A fine work of history made especially enjoyable by its breadth and wit.

Rating:
Summary: Decent historical analysis
Review: This is not a pop-history book. I picked this book up expecting it to be a very easy read but was surprised when I found myself reading through a book that would not have been out of place in any of my college history courses. Fraser has painted a very fascinating picture of various warrior queens around the world. Though at times, the narrative drags through her meticulous statement of facts, that is to be expected. I was very disappointed at her omission of the Egyptian pharaoh-queen Hatshepsut, however. Nevertheless, the women that she picks to include in her analysis make up a very good overview of the various warrior queens throughout the world and through time. It was an extremely interesting read and I would recommend it for anyone who has an interest in historical women as well as the the patience to read a (mostly) scholarly work.