An eclectic and enlightening look at the stories of women often ignored by history.
A collection examines overlooked figures from women’s history.
In this book, Ansary, the author of Jewels of Allah (2015), explores the problem of women’s stories being left out of the mainstream telling of history. Using Virginia Woolf’s well-known suggestion that many anonymous historical figures may well be female, Ansary digs into overarching trends in women’s history and provides a statistical analysis of the group’s social, political, and economic position in the 21st century. The book argues for the value of women’s contributions, using the concepts of yin and yang as a framework, and concludes that humanity as a whole loses when their stories are omitted from the broader narrative. The largest section of the text consists of capsule biographies of noteworthy but often little-known women, all born before 1900, from a variety of professions and geographic areas. The selection of the figures is wide-ranging, and while some (astronomer Maria Mitchell, peace activist Bertha von Suttner, aviator Bessie Coleman) may be familiar to history buffs, few readers are likely to know of Cleopatra Metrodora (an early Greek medical researcher), Liang Hongyu (a Song Dynasty general), or Eva Ekeblad (a Swede who discovered new uses for potatoes). The author makes an effort to draw connections between the historical figures and present-day trends (“Recent optimistic news that Metrodora would doubtlessly applaud: For the first time in US history, the number of women enrolling in medical schools exceeded the number of men”). But the women she profiles are intriguing on their own merits. Watercolor images by debut illustrator Dufkova add artistic interest to the text, and although the profiles are brief, they are well researched, with sources and citations provided in the endnotes. The book is clearly intended for a general audience, not for students of history, and it does an excellent job of capturing readers’ attention and providing sufficient but not overwhelming information. Fans of Rachel Ignotofsky’s Women in Science and Mackenzi Lee’s Bygone Badass Broads will enjoy this addition to the category of tales of overlooked women.
An eclectic and enlightening look at the stories of women often ignored by history.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9864064-4-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: Revela Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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