Review by Choice Review
For many, "women on the home front" calls WW II readily to mind, but in the US and Europe, it was during WW I that women first took on crucial military, manufacturing, and technical roles. Several monographs explore British women's contributions, including Airth-Kindree's Munitionettes (1987), Braybon's Women Workers in the First World War (1989), and Grayzel's Women's Identities at War (1999). However, despite works such as Aubin and Goldstein's The War of Guns and Mathematics (CH, Apr'15, 52-4262), there is much still to tell of women's participation in the workforce as scientists and mathematicians. Similarly, histories of women's suffrage in Britain often tend toward biography or take the long view. Fara (Univ. of Cambridge) marks the simultaneous centennials of armistice and suffrage by highlighting the overlap between the suffrage movement and women's war work in STEM fields. Not all women workers lobbied for the vote, but all struggled to have their professional efforts taken seriously. They engaged in myriad activities, from health and medicine to education and espionage. Fara thoroughly documents her research, but her prose is accessible to nonspecialists. Her organizational choice to structure some chapters as thematic and some as biographical, however, is puzzling. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --Amy K. Ackerberg-Hastings, independent scholar
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
STEALING THE SHOW: How Women Are Revolutionizing Television, by Joy Press. (Atria, $26.) A former TV critic for The Village Voice reports on some remarkable women who have managed to make shows on their own terms, including Diane English ("Murphy Brown"), Shonda Rhimes ("Grey's Anatomy," "Scandal") and Jill Soloway ("Transparent"). A LAB OF ONE'S OWN: Science and Suffrage in the First World War, by Patricia Fara. (Oxford University, $24.95.) Fara offers a vibrant series of profiles of women for whom the war presented an opportunity to take on roles in the scientific and medical realm, previously denied them. BACK TALK: Stories, by Danielle Lazarin. (Penguin, paper, $16.) Short fiction that probes the lives of American women whose privilege doesn't protect them from society's burdens. Beautifully crafted, these stories aren't without viscera; sublimated rage fills the crevices between them. BRAZEN: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World, by Penelope Bagieu. (First Second, $24.95.) A celebrated French graphic novelist, Bagieu brings together colorful, whimsical portraits of women - some known and some obscure - who broke the mold and lived life as they wanted. JUST THE FUNNY PARTS:... And a Few Hard Truths About Sneaking Into the Hollywood Boys' Club, by Nell Scovell. (Dey St./Morrow, $27.99.) In this memoir of life as a TV comedy writer, Scovell lays out the years of toxic misogyny she endured on various sets, and catalogs the men who were antagonists instead of comrades. It's not a short list. MRS., by Caitlin Macy. (Little, Brown, $27.) A bristling, funny, savage novel that homes in on the conflicted lives of three ultrawealthy Manhattan wives and the corrupt man on whom they take vengeance. Along the way it focuses boldly on the depths of women's experiences and their struggles with male power. THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID: What Men Need to Know (And Women Need to Tell Them), by Joanne Lipman. (Morrow, $28.99.) Lipman, a seasoned journalist and newspaper editor, investigates the plight of working women with sympathy and reams of data, uncovering innumerable institutionalized prejudices. I WROTE THIS BECAUSE I LOVE YOU: Essays, by Tim Kreider. (Simon & Schuster, $26.) In Kreider's pleasurable and well-wrought essays, an affable hero gamely bumbles through adventures rich with moments of fleeting profundity and moral reckoning. THIS WILL BE MY UNDOING: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America, by Morgan Jerkins. (Harper Perennial, paper, $15.99.) These challenging essays show how a sexist, racist culture prescribes black identity. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Fara (Science: A Four Thousand Year History), a historian of science at the University of Cambridge, shares the captivating stories of the unheralded British women whose valuable scientific and medical work contributed to an Allied victory in WWI. These "scientific pioneers" were marginalized by their contemporaries and, until now, largely passed over by historians. Fara ranges over a broader time period than the four years that encompassed the war and offers "new ways of thinking about the early twentieth century by looking simultaneously at the involvement of science and of women." The book's first two parts comprise a crisp discussion of politics and society in Britain, highlighting suffragist activism. Fara lays out the historical connection between science-particularly its role in determining the status of women-and suffragists, who used science to argue for equality. The war takes center stage at the narrative's midpoint, but without the familiar battle accounts. Fara vividly recounts the experiences of the educated, capable women who stepped into men's jobs as chemists, cryptographers, statisticians, meteorologists, and doctors. She brings the book's two halves together in the penultimate chapter, evaluating how these expanded roles for women in wartime affected the movement for gender equality. Fara tells this remarkable tale with intelligence and verve. Illus. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A scholarly study of the role of suffragists in the years leading up to World War I, of women scientists during the war, and of the kind of discrimination they still face today.Fara (History and Philosophy of Science/Univ. of Cambridge), who has written previously on both the history of science and the place of women in that history (Scientists Anonymous: Great Stories of Women in Science, 2007, etc.), introduces readers briefly to the status of women and then takes a closer look at the suffragist movement that had been hammering away for years at the barriers preventing women from full participation in society. When the war called men away, women became essential replacements in traditionally male jobs in science, technology, and medicine, but they were often seen as temporary, inferior, and cheaper replacements. The author provides profiles of many of the educated, talented, and resourceful individuals who temporarily filled these jobs. However, as Fara notes, for many of these women, "the War seems to have represented a career hiccup rather than a life-altering event." When the men returned, many women were forced into lower-status positions, if they kept a job at all. Still, the war had given women a taste of independence and had shown that social change was possible and that there would be no going back to prewar conditions. Furthermore, writes Fara, women had successfully demonstrated their competence, and many had acquired professional qualifications not previously available to them. The author concludes that the suffragists had a clear goalgetting women the right to vote, a right that was granted in 1918 to British women over 30but that the discrimination facing women continues to be "elusive, insidious, and stubbornly hard to eradicate." Choice selections from Fara's wide reading open each chapter.A densely written, well-documented history of the British experience that will resonate with American women as well. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
