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212 reviews for:
Wonder Women: 25 Innovators, Inventors, and Trailblazers Who Changed History
Sophia Foster-Dimino, Sam Maggs
4.04 AVERAGE
212 reviews for:
Wonder Women: 25 Innovators, Inventors, and Trailblazers Who Changed History
Sophia Foster-Dimino, Sam Maggs
4.04 AVERAGE
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
Been slowly reading bits of this for months. I've read it twice or three times and just realized I haven't reviewed it.
This book is what popular history for youth needs to look like. I love history, I'm in grad school for history and my background is - shockingly - women's history. Egads. Women's history is still a thing? Hasn't that been done? Oh, right. Women are still here, doing the history making thing and the history writing thing.
I picked this up because I wanted a good feel good read about the amazing women in history. My coworkers at the museum I previously worked at used to laugh when I said that I wasn't interested in writing another history of a straight white guy. Unfortunately, I find that the straight white guys get the interesting histories written about them. Women's history is so often relegated to the dry drudgery of apologist feminism, those awful textbooks we have to read so that our schools look progressive, and then highly sensationalized memoirs. There is tons of really incredible stuff out there, but you have to dig for it. AND SO RARELY WITH SUCH A ZAZZY COVER? LOOK AT THIS BOOK?
The book is written in a completely unacademic tone, which, as someone who has to write in that tone all the time (and is constantly told I don't do it well enough, whoops), is great. This is the kind of book that you can pick up and just read. No heavy theory, just the lives of women told in a colloquial tone that is like having a conversation with the author. Sometimes it gets a little affected, but, hey, I've never liked the tone of the entirety of anything. The variety of women covered in this little book is crazy - we have women in all sorts of fields, from all sorts of backgrounds. This isn't "25 Rich White Ladies", and it doesn't pull any punches in critiquing the men who took credit for a lot of the work that women have done. Mansplaining. The bane of any reasonably intelligent woman. It's honest and doesn't have any pretensions to anything that it's not. It's an introduction, a jumping off point, this is the kind of thing that I would give kids in my life. Something to encourage them to think about issues of gender, race, and class, to think about the assumptions that we make about people's place in society, and, most importantly, assumptions about the limitations of their own abilities.
Highly recommend for any teachers. You should have this on your bookshelf for kids to read. You could make a history project around this book. I know that history is super boring for a lot of kids, but this is the kind of thing that we need more of - a history that people can connect to, that isn't onerous to read, and honestly? just something that's a little funny (and often in an "Hmmmm, patriarchy...." kind of way).
This book is what popular history for youth needs to look like. I love history, I'm in grad school for history and my background is - shockingly - women's history. Egads. Women's history is still a thing? Hasn't that been done? Oh, right. Women are still here, doing the history making thing and the history writing thing.
I picked this up because I wanted a good feel good read about the amazing women in history. My coworkers at the museum I previously worked at used to laugh when I said that I wasn't interested in writing another history of a straight white guy. Unfortunately, I find that the straight white guys get the interesting histories written about them. Women's history is so often relegated to the dry drudgery of apologist feminism, those awful textbooks we have to read so that our schools look progressive, and then highly sensationalized memoirs. There is tons of really incredible stuff out there, but you have to dig for it. AND SO RARELY WITH SUCH A ZAZZY COVER? LOOK AT THIS BOOK?
The book is written in a completely unacademic tone, which, as someone who has to write in that tone all the time (and is constantly told I don't do it well enough, whoops), is great. This is the kind of book that you can pick up and just read. No heavy theory, just the lives of women told in a colloquial tone that is like having a conversation with the author. Sometimes it gets a little affected, but, hey, I've never liked the tone of the entirety of anything. The variety of women covered in this little book is crazy - we have women in all sorts of fields, from all sorts of backgrounds. This isn't "25 Rich White Ladies", and it doesn't pull any punches in critiquing the men who took credit for a lot of the work that women have done. Mansplaining. The bane of any reasonably intelligent woman. It's honest and doesn't have any pretensions to anything that it's not. It's an introduction, a jumping off point, this is the kind of thing that I would give kids in my life. Something to encourage them to think about issues of gender, race, and class, to think about the assumptions that we make about people's place in society, and, most importantly, assumptions about the limitations of their own abilities.
Highly recommend for any teachers. You should have this on your bookshelf for kids to read. You could make a history project around this book. I know that history is super boring for a lot of kids, but this is the kind of thing that we need more of - a history that people can connect to, that isn't onerous to read, and honestly? just something that's a little funny (and often in an "Hmmmm, patriarchy...." kind of way).
I received an ARC from BookCon 2016.
See full review here.
Wonder Women is a quick-view on the incredible women that history books (i.e. old white men) love to overlook. Written by a remarkably friendly author, the tone is casual, humorous, and easy to digest. This is a book I want to give to all the young women in my life.
See full review here.
Wonder Women is a quick-view on the incredible women that history books (i.e. old white men) love to overlook. Written by a remarkably friendly author, the tone is casual, humorous, and easy to digest. This is a book I want to give to all the young women in my life.
The illustrations were adorable. A diverse selection of historical ladies were shown, and each lady's section went over their life story without being too long.
informative
fast-paced
Can we just go ahead and make this required reading for all high school students, girls and boys?
A really good book if you want to know about amazing women in the arts, sciences, and every other aspect of history whose accomplishments were either erased from history or for which men took the credit for.
If, like me, you feel like you don't know enough about women in history and science and want to learn more, that book is perfect for you. With well-written biographies of many women that were amazing at science, spying, adventure, medecine etc, this book helps us forget the whole "only men invented stuff and did things before the XXth century" that we kinda learn in school (name like three women that invented something that you learned about in school ? I personnally can't. I can name dozens of men doing it though).
I loved the tone of the little biographies, their humour. I also think the women represented in this book were well chosen, there was a lot of diversity in races, nationalities, sexualities, centuries... I really want to learn more about those women (which I know where to do because of the appendix) and to even try to learn about other wonder women of history.
(I also was particularly happy to see Supernatural being referenced twice...)
I loved the tone of the little biographies, their humour. I also think the women represented in this book were well chosen, there was a lot of diversity in races, nationalities, sexualities, centuries... I really want to learn more about those women (which I know where to do because of the appendix) and to even try to learn about other wonder women of history.
(I also was particularly happy to see Supernatural being referenced twice...)
Full of fun facts and interesting tales of women throughout history. A thoroughly enjoyable and empowering book!