Review by Booklist Review
In this straightforward, eye-opening, and invaluable collection of concise biographies, Eder, a retired U.S. Army major general, shares the stories of 15 women who played heroic roles in WWII yet have been largely overlooked. Highlighting the lives of both civilians and military personnel, Eder draws on a vast array of previously published materials (all documented in thorough endnotes), including the reminiscences of the women themselves, to give readers an appreciative look at courageous and generous individuals she easily proves deserve a place in history. The women were from different countries with different backgrounds and callings and include spies, members of the Women's Army Corps, resisters from behind enemy lines, a scientist, and a tennis player with a surprising past. Based on presentations the author has made over the years to a variety of audiences, this group biography offers a breezy tone, historic photographs, and plenty of lively anecdotes to bring its subjects to vivid life. While primarily focusing on the women's wartime activities, these portraits also include welcome and compelling coverage of their postwar lives.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Eder (American Cyberspace) profiles women who broke gender barriers to help the Allied war effort during WWII in this breezy history. Her subjects include tennis player Alice Marble, who won 18 Grand Slam championships in the 1930s and, after her husband was killed in action over Germany, helped U.S. Army intelligence to obtain Nazi financial records from her former lover, a Swiss banker. Journalist Ruth Gruber guided nearly 1,000 Jewish war refugees to safety in the U.S. in 1944, while opera-loving British sisters Ida and Louise Cook helped 29 people escape Nazi Germany before war was declared. Polish American spy Stephanie Czech Rader, who gathered intelligence of Polish and Soviet security services in postwar Poland, was posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit in 2016. Cartographer Marion Armstrong Frieswyk created three-dimensional topographical maps to aid U.S. military commanders in planning troop movements. Eder notes that though many of her subjects "shied away from medals and recognition," they influenced the desegregation of the U.S. armed forces and served as role models for younger women in the military and intelligence services. This brisk and informative survey is a worthy tribute to the trailblazing women of WWII. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Drawing on fresh documents and exclusive interviews with family members and associates, CNN analyst Bergen (The United States of Jihad) limns The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden (60,000-copy first printing). From retired U.S. Army Major General Eder, The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line chronicles 15 mostly unacknowledged women, from a Dutch resistance fighter to an American tennis champion, who made a difference during World War II. In The Gallery of Miracles and Madness, former Guardian journalist English shows how a Weimar-era doctor's collection of artwork by psychiatric patients inspired emerging artists, which led to a Nazi backlash against so-called degenerate art and the patient-artists themselves, who were eventually gassed in a run-up to the Final Solution. Evans's Maiden Voyages moves from celebrities in first class to professional women in second class to desperate émigrés in steerage--not to mention crew members--to reveal how the golden age of ocean liner travel changed women's lives (60,000-copy first printing). As seen in Costa biography finalist Kavanagh's The Irish Assassins, republican militants in 1882 Dublin murdered Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke--Britain's chief secretary and undersecretary for Ireland, respectively--which ended their secret negotiations to achieve peace and independence for Ireland. Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, Levine details the battle that raged between Frederick Douglass and President Andrew Johnson as The Failed Promise of Reconstruction became evident. In Once More to the Sky, Raab collects the 10 Esquire pieces he wrote between 2005 and 2015 about the construction of One World Trade Center, adding an epilogue and including Woolhead's four-color photographs throughout. In The Ambassador, British American biographer Ronald (Condé Nast) digs deep into Joseph P. Kennedy's controversial tenure as U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's (75,000-copy first printing). Former curator of timekeeping at the Royal Observatory Greenwich and director of the Antiquarian Horological Society, Rooney is the author to tell us About Time--that is, the history of timekeeping worldwide.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A chronicle of a group of courageous women whose contributions to World War II "put comic book heroines to shame." "The story of the war will never be fully or fairly written if the achievement of women in it are untold," writes Eder, a retired Army major general, in the introduction to this enthusiastic collection of their exploits. Most did not seek fame and were not "trailblazers by choice," but readers will share the author's outrage upon learning that many were deliberately written out of history and treated badly even as they served. When the Air Force began accepting women for flight training in 1976, it announced proudly that this was the first time it had permitted women to fly; angry Women Airforce Service Pilot veterans pointed out the error. These included Ola Mildred Rexroat, who joined in 1944, trained, and flew for the Air Force within the U.S. Like all WASPs, she was denied military status, paid less than male pilots, and ineligible for veteran's benefits until 1977. Perhaps Eder's most famous character, Virginia Hall, risked her life in Nazi-occupied Europe, first for Britain's Secret Operations Executive, and then the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, despite being easily identifiable because of her limp. Alice Marble, the world's amateur tennis champion, was shot while carrying out a successful espionage operation in Switzerland. Throughout the war, nurses played an essential role, and Katherine Nolan's experiences in a field hospital make gripping reading. Other important women assembled the first computers that cracked complex Axis codes (see Liza Mundy's Code Girls), drew essential maps, or risked and often lost their lives in the resistance. Several of Eder's women simply survived imprisonment or concentration camps, no mean feat. The author fills her accounts with invented dialogue and novelistic thoughts, but her subjects worked hard, often behaving heroically and suffering for it, so that's a minor quibble. Inspiring stories of women warriors who deserve greater attention. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
