I liked Bren's book The Barbizon so much, that I admit to being disappointed with this one. First, the book offers a very limited history, from the 1960s, decade by decade, to Fearless Girl.

Since time horizon coincides with my professional life, my view of history is different. Admittedly, the second chapter offers extremely cursory looks at the incomparable sisters Tennessee Claflin and Victoria Woodhull, deserving of so much more than a few paragraphs. And more please about Maggie Walker, daughter of a slave and the first Black female bank president. What about the Gilded Age's Hetty Green? Those were the stories I was hoping for.

So to be clear, this is a history of second-wave feminists, who were interviewed by Bren. Good stories and often-evocative photos show us what the workplace environment was like: the judgment of appearances, the casual 'boys will be boys' acting out in what would clearly be sexual harassment today; and the true need for closed off professional associations, something I participated in with another professional field at the same time. For readers who consider this history, there's much to admire and enjoy in this book.

Now for my pet peeve. The author uses the first names of the women she interviewed. Yes, that may be a technique for helping the reader feel close to the subject, but in actuality it's belittling. She references Oppenheimer several times, and not as Robert. Same with Louis Rukeyser and numerous other notable men. Yet the women were Alice, Lillian, Robin, Mickie (the powerhouse who ran her own firm), Priscilla, Margo, Helen and Helen the Second, and many more. Yet she refers to the New York Times journalist Lucy Greenbaum as Greenbaum. How to explain this inconsistency?

She is not alone in creating this inadvertent hierarchy. For example, Jane Austen becomes Jane, not Austen, while Charles Dickens is always Dickens, not Charlie. Please, give your subjects their dignity the same way you do with men. They've worked overtime to earn it.

Thank you to NetGalley and W.W. Norton & Company for this Advance Reader Copy.

For me, She-Wolves was much like The Barbizon - not so much about the individual women but about the time, place, and observed trends. The history of women slowly and persistently working their way into Wall Street was great and interesting. Once the timeline reached the 1980s, however, I was less engaged, as it felt much like my own experience in a different part of the business world and in another part of the US. Nevertheless, She-Wolves is an important documentation of how women worked their way into the workplace, something that many now and into the future know little about.