Amazing Women Of The Civil War : Fascinating True Stories of Women Who Made a Difference

Rating:
Summary: Horrible
Review: I am a graduate student in American History with a focus on women and their roles in the Civil War. As such I was pleased to find Garrison's Amazing Women. However, once I started reading the book I was extremely disappointed. One of the first things I noticed was the lack of citations and a bibliography. Garrison neglects to credit anyone with the information he gathered for this particular work except to say that you can find alot of information on the internet. And while I understand Garrison's intended audience to be the general public where footnotes are found to be annoying, a bibliography would surely be helpful to anyone interested in learning more about these women. Furthermore, Garrison displays an attitude throughout the work that some of the acts and actions credited to women must surely be exaggerated. What I found to be particularly annoying with the work was the attention given to the men that were spouses to the women chosen for the work. If the book is about women, write about the women. To make matters worse, Garrison also includes among his Amazing Women a man that cross-dresses. This information is irrelevant to the subject. The only positive thing I can say about Amazing Women is that Garrison provides a nice list of women who played important and diverse roles during the war. So, if you are looking for research, this book is a huge disappointment. But if you are looking for a quick read where all the information is assumed to be correct, without providing any proof then this is your book. However, if you are truly interested in learning about women's roles in the Civil War I would suggest Mary Elizabeth Massey's Women in the Civil War (University of Nebraska Press, 1966) or Elizabeth D. Leonard's All the Daring of the Soldier (Penguin Books, 1999).

Rating:
Summary: A Disappointing Read
Review: I am a graduate student in American History with a focus on women and their roles in the Civil War. As such I was pleased to find Garrison's Amazing Women. However, once I started reading the book I was extremely disappointed. One of the first things I noticed was the lack of citations and a bibliography. Garrison neglects to credit anyone with the information he gathered for this particular work except to say that you can find alot of information on the internet. And while I understand Garrison's intended audience to be the general public where footnotes are found to be annoying, a bibliography would surely be helpful to anyone interested in learning more about these women. Furthermore, Garrison displays an attitude throughout the work that some of the acts and actions credited to women must surely be exaggerated. What I found to be particularly annoying with the work was the attention given to the men that were spouses to the women chosen for the work. If the book is about women, write about the women. To make matters worse, Garrison also includes among his Amazing Women a man that cross-dresses. This information is irrelevant to the subject. The only positive thing I can say about Amazing Women is that Garrison provides a nice list of women who played important and diverse roles during the war. So, if you are looking for research, this book is a huge disappointment. But if you are looking for a quick read where all the information is assumed to be correct, without providing any proof then this is your book. However, if you are truly interested in learning about women's roles in the Civil War I would suggest Mary Elizabeth Massey's Women in the Civil War (University of Nebraska Press, 1966) or Elizabeth D. Leonard's All the Daring of the Soldier (Penguin Books, 1999).

Rating:
Summary: Enlightening
Review: This book did an excellent job on describing the roles in which women took part in during the Civil War. Webb Garrison did an excellent job choosing women to write about. Both Southern and Northern women were talked about, showing readers that these women were not as different as they had thought they were.

Rating:
Summary: Horrible
Review: This book gave too many unwanted details and needed to cover the women in general. I do like interesting facts every once in while, but these facts weren't even interesting. It was also poorly written. I would not recommend this book to anyone!

Rating:
Summary: Very good historical piece!! Very enjoyable!!
Review: This was really good. It's about various women that helped shape the Civil War, whether by being Spies, Soldiers, Journalists, Angels of Mercy, or whatever. You'll be surprised how far some of these women went for their cause, and how much they accomplished in that time frame that provided them with so little independent resources. This book is a good introduction into these women, that may trigger your interest to learn more about them. I wish it provided even more information on these people, but basically it seemed to be a book to introduce you to these women and tell of their actions, then go locate more information about them.