She Caused a Riot

February 15, 2018

Buzzfeed writer Jewell's look at 100 mostly obscure women from history offers brief portraits of women who span centuries and the globe, including Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut, English mystic Margery Kempe, Queen Njinga of Angola, Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani, Maori leader Whina Cooper, Apache warrior Lozen, and Wu Zetian, China's only female emperor. The women featured include leaders from ancient history, warriors with impressive kill counts, scientific geniuses, writers, suffragettes, fun-loving vixens, Nazi fighters, and revolutionaries. They all share a fierce determination to succeed and an unwillingness to accept limitations. And yet, their stories have been largely ignored by history. The book is written in a fun, irreverent, and easy-to-read style. The vignettes will serve to pique interest and motivate readers to attempt to learn more about these amazing women. The modern, colorful layout adds to the appeal, with a continual sprinkling of provocative quotes and footnotes. VERDICT A recommended purchase that will provide readers with ideas for further research and questions about these extraordinary women left out of our history books.--Theresa Muraski, Univ. of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Lib.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2018
Washington Post pop-culture video host Jewell has crafted indomitable coverage of historical women everyone should know. In this collection of minibiographies, she introduces dozens of female-identifying revolutionaries, dissidents, geniuses, muckrakers, and conquerors. Her subjects span thousands of years, from Queen Zenobia of third-century-BCE Syria to Nana Asma'u of eighteenth-century Nigeria to Josephine Baker. Jewell narrates the lives of these women with a righteous comic and conversational tone, and her enthusiasm is contagious. The women chosen are organized into larger chapters, some thematically light (women who knew how to party, women who unabashedly wore pants) while some tackle heavier topics (women who punched Nazis, literally and metaphorically). Though she refuses to name him beyond the introduction, Jewell's work is in clear response to the election of Donald Trump. Still, her intentions with this book are clear and optimistic. Her hope that the women she studied become commonplace names infuses every paragraph. Galvanizing and laugh-out-loud funny, this book is a riot on par with the women it presents.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)