I couldn't get through this title. It ended up not being for me, but I hope it finds a hope with other readers.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This is a wonderful book. For many years women's contributions have been lost. This book is filled with famous and infamous women and how they shaped history. Many of these women will be familiar but there were some surprises. The short bios are great starting places to learning more about these women. It will make a wonderful addition to your library. Enjoy

This book had very interesting information, but the method of delivery fell flat for me. I enjoyed the snarky, informal voice, but the vignette style of storytelling made it difficult to follow. Overall, I liked this book, but did think it could be easier to read.

In her new history of “famous, infamous, and unsung women,” Rosalind Miles takes an (often deservedly) irreverent and sarcastic tone as she recounts the women throughout the past two hundred years who resisted attempts to curtail their involvement in politics and spheres outside the home.

Unfortunately, the stories of many of these women had been lost to history until now, but Miles’s account corrects the record and provides inspiration to today’s feminists who are faced with increasingly dictatorial governments and leaders.

What’s frustrating, though, is that every move towards progress seems to be followed by a period of restrictive backlash. In fact, the earliest powers were female, though they soon were usurped by a belief in the superiority of the male (with photographs of phallic monuments to demonstrate). Though Miles does provide a general manifesto for the future, I wished it had more detailed options to escape the progress-backlash cycle.

The content of the book, though, full of anecdotal history, was fascinating, and I learned about women in history I’d not heard of before. I was particularly interested in how women participated in the French Revolution and in the early UK labor movements—and how the Code of Napoleon stripped women of their rights.

I also liked how so many of the leaders in the labor, abolitionist, suffrage, and women’s rights movements developed friendships that became integral to their activism such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

The Women’s History of the Modern World has a lighter tone and is less U.S.-centered than many similar histories. While it is still focused on the Western world (particularly Europe), it didn’t ignore revolutions in other regions that promised and failed to deliver equality and power to women. I definitely encourage those interested in a smart, non-scholarly history to add this to their reading lists!

Wow! That is all I can say about this brilliantly written book about women who have made such an impact on our world. Some of them I was familiar with, others I learned about by reading this. EVERY woman needs to read this book, as it is important to see how far we have come.