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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent women's Civil War history book
Review: I am the author of "Memories of Maggie" and "Potpourri Of War" so I readily ordered this new book to learn more about the women who served during the Civil War."All the Daring of the Soldier" was excellent. It brought forth more women than I was even aware of who did so much for their country during the Civil War. Elizabeth D. Leonard should be proud of the work she put into her research and writing. This book should be a welcomed item to anyone's collection but especially for students to learn more women's history. I only have one complaint. There was no mention of Dr. Mary Edwards Walker who also served during the Civil War and was ultimately the only woman to date to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for her actions during the war. I hope this was just an oversight on the author's part. BUT believe the rest of this book is wonderful!
Rating: 
Summary: A mixed bag.
Review: I am the author of "Memories of Maggie" and "Potpourri Of War" so I readily ordered this new book to learn more about the women who served during the Civil War. "All the Daring of the Soldier" was excellent. It brought forth more women than I was even aware of who did so much for their country during the Civil War. Elizabeth D. Leonard should be proud of the work she put into her research and writing. This book should be a welcomed item to anyone's collection but especially for students to learn more women's history. I only have one complaint. There was no mention of Dr. Mary Edwards Walker who also served during the Civil War and was ultimately the only woman to date to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for her actions during the war. I hope this was just an oversight on the author's part. BUT believe the rest of this book is wonderful!
Rating:
Summary: A mixed bag.
Review: Leonard's early chapters are good, though she misses a couple of prominent women. However, her chapters on "soldier women" are greatly disappointing. She can provide positive proof of only three women who successfully disguised themselves as men and fought during the war. All other cases she presents are based entirely upon anecdotal information. Her claim that 500-1,000 women served is entirely unsubstantiated. Leonard seems to accept the story of Loreta Velasquez even though her account has been disproven.
Rating: 
Summary: All the Daring of the Soldier
Review: Women soldiers, vivandieres, nurses and so on of the Civil War. More detailed than Hall's book, but still not a really scholarly text. Various mentions of women in the American Revolution seem off-topic, with not much to show how they connect causally with the Civil War. Women spies and scouts, real women soldiers (a few, with the presumption that many were never discovered), etc. A lot of attention to contemporary literature and balladry concerning fighting women, though this work isn't deeply analyzed. For me the most valuable part of the book was a fairly long discussion of how it was that women could convincingly masquerade as men in the 1860's. This was useful and interesting. Overall, though, there was only so much this book had to offer. I wonder if the limited hard evidence for female soldiers makes any book of this kind an uphill struggle. A new volume on the topic has just come out, and I'll be having a look at that.
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