Women Warriors: A History (Warriors (Potomac Books))

David E. Jones has written a very interesting history book about a too little known topic. Many people have heard about the wars lead by Elisabeth 1. and Catherine the Great - and, in our own age, Margaret Thatcher. But what about the hundreds and thousands of warriors - princesses, peasant girls and many others - who actively fought "like men" in wars from antiquity until our present age?I must admit that this book fills a gap in my knowledge about women in war. The notion of war as a maleactivity is, if not entirely false, only partly true. The differences of behavior between the sexes are not so big after all,when it comes to fighting!

Women Warriors through history and today. A very interesting and informative read. Too often these unsung heroes and their great deeds have been overlooked and downplayed, these Lady Warriors proved and are still proving the world over, that they are the equal and can sometimes be better than men who were/are with them. I highly recommend this book for men and women. History does repeat itself and we will see more of these "Lady Warriors' taking on the fight and 'taking care of business'.

I'll be honest, I've read only a small part of this book. But that's why I won't be reading the rest of this book.I wanted to love this; it's a fascinating topic with a lot of historic material. I feel bad writing a poor review of the book, because someone will take that as justification that the history isn't there, which isn't the case.But the chapter I started with, further researching an era with which I'm already familiar, showed that this book was written with a handful of incomplete notes without much review. A few quick examples from Heian-Kamakura Japan:"The twelfth century witnessed the winning of Japan by the first Minamoto shogun. In his bloody rise to power, his wife Masaki Hojo rode with him as his most able general. When he died, she appointed her son to the position of shogun and ruled as queen regent in his name."and a page later"When the great Shogun Yoritomo died, his wife Hojo Masa-Ko took control of the government..."This is the same woman, presented separately as if she is two different people. Jones is apparently not familiar enough with the material to realize that the Minamoto shōgun is also the shōgun Minamoto Yoritomo and that Hojo Masa-Ko and Masaki Hojo are both Hōjō Masako (still not her real name, but the one she is known by today). Masako, the Nun Shōgun, is legitimately an astounding historic figure (wife of shōgun #1, mother and de facto regent of shōgun #2, mother and de facto regent of shōgun #3, great-great-aunt and de facto regent of shōgun #4, and a skillful politician who exiled her own father to slow the bloody churn of political assassinations and talked her people down from a civil war). She absolutely deserves mention in such a book, but as a single person with more of her accomplishments represented than merely accompanying her famous husband.Another woman is mentioned as leading the Taira clan warriors against the Heike. This would have been quite a feat, as the Taira and the Heike are the same clan (with different pronunciation). Hangaku Itazaki is also listed twice as if she is two different people in different places, first as Itagaki and later as Hangaku. Again, this diminishes a legitimately impressive figure who did lead 3,000 Taira against 10,000 opponents (they were the Hōjō's shōgunate forces, not the Heike).I'm not enough of an expert to comment on the rest of the book and its accuracy in other eras and locations, but these errors in the subject I do know disappointed me and give me skepticism for other chapters. And that's sad, because the topic deserves better attention.

Does an okay job of illustrating women warriors over time. I would have liked to see more ancient stories, explainations, and some artwork. It is worth getting if you are interested in war and warriors.

Very enlightening! I can't believe how much I've missed! Bat Zabbai is definitely my favorite. Who knew a woman once took half of Rome!!!

Professor Jones tries to write a history of women warriors but fails for a number of reasons. First,the book lacks coherence. He includes women who were warriors, war time leaders and any other women who could at all be tied into a martial tradition. He even brings in Cleopatra, neither a warrior nor a general nor the leader of a nation at war. However, he makes no effort to create any kind of theory to explain women warriors or even identify any common patterns of behavior. Consequently the book is simply a collection of anecdotes organized only by region. Second, the book contains a number of factual errors. For example, he mentions "General Julius Caesar" invading Britain during the reign of Claudius and later refers to Saxons conquering Roman Britain in the first century AD. In fact, Julius Caesar led an expedition against Britain about a century before Emperor Claudius, it was during Claudius's reign that Britain became part of the Empire and the Saxons didn't invade until the fifth century. Likewise, he describes Lucy Brewer as the first female Marine and fails to mention her account was most likely fiction. These are just errors I caught in passing. Third, he leaps mightily in his conclusions. He claims integrating women in the military should be no problem, despite the fact all of the warriors he describes are either unique individuals or (much less often) members of female only units. He also claims martial arts training negates the male advantages of size and strength. This ignores strength needed to bear arms, armor and gear in battle and on long marches. In addition, ancient armies didn't have the time to train common soldiers to the level of martial arts experts. Even the intensively trained Roman legions preferred big and strong recruits. As a final note, I am amazed Charles Moskos gave this book a blurb. Antonia Fraser's "Warrior Queens" and Eileen MacDonald's "Shoot the Women First" are much better treatments of related subjects. Give this one a pass.

Used it as a reference for a report and ended up reading the whole thing because it was so interesting!

So much more could be written on this subject, but this is a very nice introduction to the combat roles women have played.