Uppity Women of the Renaissance

Rating:
Summary: More stories of famous and forgotten women
Review: Another entertaining collection of mini biographies of women from the well-known to the obscure. one or two of the stories slightly puzled me. For instance, there is an interesting story about a doctor trying to concot a remedy for the plague out of badgers, but his wife's role seems to consisted of dying of the plague, not a particularly uppity thing to do, couldn't quite see what she was doing there. Also Vicki leon, rather oddly ,seems to have swallowed all that nonsense about the Renaissance being a time when individuality was born etc, it's as if she hasn't read her earlier book 'Uppity Women of Medieval Times' which is full of individuals. @Renaiisance' was a term invented in the 19th century to describe something that never actually happened, individuality, art.learning etc flourished throughout the Middle Ages, there was no 'Renaissance'. Also she is still going on about witchhunts being a 'holocaust'(insulting to vicitms of the real holocaust. The number of people executed as witches wasfar fewer than she claims, they were not all women, and the imputus for witchhunts came from commoners, not from the church or the state. But anyway, these stories of interesting women are fun to read, and I always find lots of women I'd never heard of before. Another fun read.

Rating:
Summary: More stories of famous and forgotten women
Review: Another entertaining collection of mini biographies of women from the well-known to the obscure. one or two of the stories slightly puzled me. For instance, there is an interesting story about a doctor trying to concot a remedy for the plague out of badgers, but his wife's role seems to consisted of dying of the plague, not a particularly uppity thing to do, couldn't quite see what she was doing there. Also Vicki leon, rather oddly ,seems to have swallowed all that nonsense about the Renaissance being a time when individuality was born etc, it's as if she hasn't read her earlier book 'Uppity Women of Medieval Times' which is full of individuals. @Renaiisance' was a term invented in the 19th century to describe something that never actually happened, individuality, art.learning etc flourished throughout the Middle Ages, there was no 'Renaissance'. Also she is still going on about witchhunts being a 'holocaust'(insulting to vicitms of the real holocaust. The number of people executed as witches wasfar fewer than she claims, they were not all women, and the imputus for witchhunts came from commoners, not from the church or the state. But anyway, these stories of interesting women are fun to read, and I always find lots of women I'd never heard of before. Another fun read.

Rating:
Summary: Another Winner
Review: I recently purchased this and Ms Leon's Uppity Women of the Middle Ages. These books are a must. They are informative and fun and could have gone on for hundreds more pages without being boring. Being a published author I've read too many dull books for research. Ms Leon is the proverbial breath of fresh air!

Rating:
Summary: Amusing - yes. Educational - not really.
Review: Not too bad as far as coffee table books go. All the articles are short - a few hundred words - and there are plenty of B/W pictures to break the text up. This is a book I'd be happy my teenage daughter reading to get her interested in thinking outside the 'norm' of historical research but she wouldn't learn much from it (this book).

A nice, light, amusing read that isn't going to offend anyone and might just entertain or inspire along the way.

Rating:
Summary: Amusing - yes. Educational - not really.
Review: Not too bad as far as coffee table books go. All the articles are short - a few hundred words - and there are plenty of B/W pictures to break the text up. This is a book I'd be happy my teenage daughter reading to get her interested in thinking outside the 'norm' of historical research but she wouldn't learn much from it (this book).

A nice, light, amusing read that isn't going to offend anyone and might just entertain or inspire along the way.

Rating:
Summary: More detail, please!
Review: Prior to reading "Uppity Women of the Renaissance", I'd only ever heard of Vicki Leon's "Uppity Women" series, but hadn't read any of them. I found the title to be both intriguing and amusing. Having finished "Renaissance", I'm not really sure whether I want to read the other books in the series or not. In only 300 pages, Leon covers the lives of 100 of the Renaissance's most uppity women. As you can imagine, 100 women crammed into 300 pages doesn't leave much room for a lot of detail. Many of the women discussed seemed to have been mentioned briefly in old records and not much is actually known about them, other than the fact that they may have, for example, owned a successful business.

Leon attempts to weave modern jokes and cynicisms into the stories, as in "Busier than a two-career car-pooler with three kids, La Grosse Margot was one of many women who...". Sometimes I found these dashes of humor to be laugh-out-loud funny; other times, they were annoying.

It was really nice to read about so many interesting women. I'd never read or heard anything about most of them before. I just wish there had more detail...a lot more detail. Much of the time, the brief stories seem like sketches or outlines for a wonderful full-length book. Won't some kind-hearted author out there please write a nice full-length book on one of these women? The life of Christian Davies would be a good one to start with!


Rating:
Summary: Fun Book
Review: This is a fun book that tells you a little bit about women from all walks of life during the renaissance. From the pope's cousin that poisons people, to the mistresses of kings. This book was cute and witty. It has black and white sketches. This is not a good reference book, but it lets you know about women that you've never heard of. She included the smallest incidents, such as the woman who sold bad meat from her cart to big incidents, such as the young girl who organized her family to stab her father to death (the lout deserved it). It uncovers correption in every court from the Vaticin to Denmark. This book highlights martyrs, wonderful mothers, artists, and even female blacksmiths. This is great book, and you would be a fool to not read it at least once. A great gift book or coffee table book. The only down side is that sometimes it is difficult to tell if the author is stating a fact or making a joke...such is the torcher of funny people.

Rating:
Summary: I loved this Book!
Review: Uppity Women of the Renaissance by Vicki Leon is a pleasure to read and it's a book you'll keep going back to. Leon knows how to make history fun and she has a knack for finding the most interesting characters from the past, and then bringing them back to life.
If you've never read one of Vicki Leon's books, you're in for a real treat. Give one as a present to a reluctant reader, give one to yourself!
Ms Leon is not just an excellent writer, but is also a fine historian. She has made it her mission to discover long lost women with spunk and brains, and to bring them to the public's eye. I'm a big fan of her's and have every book she's written. I especially like to give them as gifts since they are that rare combination of spirit, fun, frolic, sassiness, seriousness, and real history. Uppity Women of the Renaissance is one of Ms. Leon's very best. Highly recommended.