Women Warriors: A History (The Warriors)

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: I am very impressed with this book, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the female matrial heritage. It is fascinating and very well written. If you are looking for good information and a well thought out piece, this book is perfect.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting premise but fails to deliver
Review: Professor Jones tries to write a history of women warriors but fails for a number of reasons. First,the book lacks coherence. He includes women who were warriors, war time leaders and any other women who could at all be tied into a martial tradition. He even brings in Cleopatra, neither a warrior nor a general nor the leader of a nation at war. However, he makes no effort to create any kind of theory to explain women warriors or even identify any common patterns of behavior. Consequently the book is simply a collection of anecdotes organized only by region. Second, the book contains a number of factual errors. For example, he mentions "General Julius Caesar" invading Britain during the reign of Claudius and later refers to Saxons conquering Roman Britain in the first century AD. In fact, Julius Caesar led an expedition against Britain about a century before Emperor Claudius, it was during Claudius's reign that Britain became part of the Empire and the Saxons didn't invade until the fifth century. Likewise, he describes Lucy Brewer as the first female Marine and fails to mention her account was most likely fiction. These are just errors I caught in passing. Third, he leaps mightily in his conclusions. He claims integrating women in the military should be no problem, despite the fact all of the warriors he describes are either unique individuals or (much less often) members of female only units. He also claims martial arts training negates the male advantages of size and strength. This ignores strength needed to bear arms, armor and gear in battle and on long marches. In addition, ancient armies didn't have the time to train common soldiers to the level of martial arts experts. Even the intensively trained Roman legions preferred big and strong recruits. As a final note, I am amazed Charles Moskos gave this book a blurb. Antonia Fraser's "Warrior Queens" and Eileen MacDonald's "Shoot the Women First" are much better treatments of related subjects. Give this one a pass.

Rating:
Summary: excellent history
Review: The author sums up the book in his own preface. "History, as you will read, demonstrates that the warrior's mantle is a woman's birthright as surely as it is a man's and that the hand that rocks the cradle can also wield the sword." I found the book highly readable, and an enthusiastic overview of women's warrior history. Many of the stories were not new to me. I already knew the histories of women pirates, gladiators, warriors and soldiers--from hundreds of different sources scattered throughout historical material. But that is the beauty of this book. It combines into one compact volume a known history long ignored. And the author encompasses the world's history, not just a particular continent or a single point in time. The entire work is carefully footnoted. The historical references at the back of the book appear thoroughly researched. The author himself "sought references that purport to be historical as opposed to mythological texts". The index is efficient. All in all, an excellent book, and an excellent history.