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100 Nasty Women Of History
These are the women who were deemed too nasty for their times - too nasty to be recognised, too nasty to be paid for their work and sometimes too nasty to be allowed to live.
When you learn about women in history, it's hard not to wonder: why do they all seem so prim and proper? The truth is, you're probably not being told the whole story. Also, (mostly male) historians keep leaving out or glossing over some of the most badass women who ever walked the surface of this planet. Fake news!
But fret not. Former Buzzfeed senior writer and Washington Post pop culture host Hannah Jewell has got you covered. In 100 Nasty Women of History, Hannah will spill the tea on:
-the women with impressive kill counts
-the women who wrote dangerous things
-the women who fought empires and racists
-the women who knew how to have a good-ass time
-the women who punched Nazis (metaphorically but also not)
And that's just half of the women in this book. That's pretty metal.
So, if you think that Nasty Women are a new thing, think again. They've always been around - you just haven't always heard of them. Take these stories and tell them to your friends. Write them on a wall. Sneakily tell them to your niece (who's old enough to hear the bad words, of course). Post them to your local MP (especially if it's a man). Make your friends dress up as Nasty Women for Halloween. These are the 100 Nasty Women of History who gave zero f*cks whatsoever. These are the 100 Nasty Women of History who made a difference.
These are the 100 Nasty Women of History whom everyone needs to know about, right now.
When you learn about women in history, it's hard not to wonder: why do they all seem so prim and proper? The truth is, you're probably not being told the whole story. Also, (mostly male) historians keep leaving out or glossing over some of the most badass women who ever walked the surface of this planet. Fake news!
But fret not. Former Buzzfeed senior writer and Washington Post pop culture host Hannah Jewell has got you covered. In 100 Nasty Women of History, Hannah will spill the tea on:
-the women with impressive kill counts
-the women who wrote dangerous things
-the women who fought empires and racists
-the women who knew how to have a good-ass time
-the women who punched Nazis (metaphorically but also not)
And that's just half of the women in this book. That's pretty metal.
So, if you think that Nasty Women are a new thing, think again. They've always been around - you just haven't always heard of them. Take these stories and tell them to your friends. Write them on a wall. Sneakily tell them to your niece (who's old enough to hear the bad words, of course). Post them to your local MP (especially if it's a man). Make your friends dress up as Nasty Women for Halloween. These are the 100 Nasty Women of History who gave zero f*cks whatsoever. These are the 100 Nasty Women of History who made a difference.
These are the 100 Nasty Women of History whom everyone needs to know about, right now.
448 pages, Paperback
First published November 2, 2017
499 people are currently reading
6819 people want to read
About the author
Hannah Jewell
2 books43 followersHannah Jewell is the Pop Culture Host on the video team at The Washington Post, formerly a senior staff writer at BuzzFeed UK, where she became known for her humor writing about gender and her satire of UK and US politics, and for presenting BuzzFeed's live 2016 election night show.
She was born in London, but her parents whisked her away to California when she was a baby, and so she grew up frolicking on beaches and through redwood forests. She earned a degree from UC Berkeley in Middle Eastern Studies, taking a year out to study and work in Beirut. She had a great time in Lebanon but now is unfortunately banned from that country. She then returned to the UK in 2013 for an MPhil in International Relations and Politics at Cambridge, which was mostly fine.
She Caused a Riot is an empowering, no-holds-barred look into the epic adventures and dangerous exploits of 100 inspiring women who were too brave, too brilliant, too unconventional, too political, too poor, not ladylike enough and not white enough to be recognized by their contemporaries.
She was born in London, but her parents whisked her away to California when she was a baby, and so she grew up frolicking on beaches and through redwood forests. She earned a degree from UC Berkeley in Middle Eastern Studies, taking a year out to study and work in Beirut. She had a great time in Lebanon but now is unfortunately banned from that country. She then returned to the UK in 2013 for an MPhil in International Relations and Politics at Cambridge, which was mostly fine.
She Caused a Riot is an empowering, no-holds-barred look into the epic adventures and dangerous exploits of 100 inspiring women who were too brave, too brilliant, too unconventional, too political, too poor, not ladylike enough and not white enough to be recognized by their contemporaries.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 431 reviews
January 29, 2018
DNF at page 40.
I was so eager to read this book but it seems that this book isn't for people that enjoy history or maybe it's for really young people. So many parts of history are disregarded as not interesting to the reader!
In any other circumstance I would love the humorous way she writes, but instead of accurately describing the history of these women, the important parts are covered with funny comments, continuous comments against men that made me uncomfortable from the first pages. Being a feminist for me isn't about being hateful against all men.
After each story I tried to think of what stuck with me and I got nothing, because she leaves out or diminishes historical facts that are essential to really understand the importance of these women.
I'm not sure if I'm going to keep reading this, maybe I'll buy another book with the same subject but properly written.
Edit: I tried to give it a chance and read two more stories. The author is talking about Hypatia and says that she (the author) doesn't understand math and science because the patriarchy told her that she has a small brain not suitable for math, etc, we've all heard this BS. Seriously? In the western world, at this day and age, in a country where you're obviously educated, you're saying that patriarchy is the reason you're not good at math? I'm so fed up with this book.
I was so eager to read this book but it seems that this book isn't for people that enjoy history or maybe it's for really young people. So many parts of history are disregarded as not interesting to the reader!
In any other circumstance I would love the humorous way she writes, but instead of accurately describing the history of these women, the important parts are covered with funny comments, continuous comments against men that made me uncomfortable from the first pages. Being a feminist for me isn't about being hateful against all men.
After each story I tried to think of what stuck with me and I got nothing, because she leaves out or diminishes historical facts that are essential to really understand the importance of these women.
I'm not sure if I'm going to keep reading this, maybe I'll buy another book with the same subject but properly written.
Edit: I tried to give it a chance and read two more stories. The author is talking about Hypatia and says that she (the author) doesn't understand math and science because the patriarchy told her that she has a small brain not suitable for math, etc, we've all heard this BS. Seriously? In the western world, at this day and age, in a country where you're obviously educated, you're saying that patriarchy is the reason you're not good at math? I'm so fed up with this book.
January 21, 2018
I took my time with this book for 2 reasons. Firstly because if I read it all in like a week or so, the women would all get jumbled in my mind and I wouldn't have enough time to reflect on each of them individually. Then secondly, because this book made me so mad, that I had to put it down at times. Just reading about the injustices women faced, oooh it boiled my blood and there is only so much I could take in one sitting. You can guess some of the injustices that women faced (and still do face) but I guess it was the less obvious ones and the particular examples that really ticked me off. I'll tell you one that really irked me -In 1894, Annie Jump Cannon started working as a computer for some man in Harvard who employed women because he didn't have to pay them as much as men. They were trying to figure out how best to use a classification system for stars and nobody could work out the best way to do it. Annie came up with a way to do it and that classification system is STILL USED TODAY because it is that effective. She published nine volumes of work between 1918 and 1924. Now here is the really fantastic and super awesome part... the system she created wasn't named after her. It was named The Harvard system and Jewell explains that it's ironic because she "was not made (or paid as) a member of the Harvard Faculty until she was in her seventies in 1938, just three years before she died." WOOOOOW. ALSO for years, she wasn't even allowed to use a telescope by herself because it was too dangerous for women: "What if she saw something in the heavens that caused her to faint or win a Nobel Prize?" That story just really angered me. There is even more to the story, I'm just giving the basic version but you get the picture.
Of course this book didn't just make me feel anger. It made me feel so proud to be a woman. Reading stories of women who were so bad-ass and who just took no shit, was honestly a breath of fresh air. There were so many different women, the book was very diverse and inclusive. What I also loved was the fact that there were also stories about women who weren't good and pure. Stories about women who were ruthless and powerful and scary. At the start of the book, Jewell mentions to pick one woman from the book and look her up in more detail after finishing the book. I chose a few women but my number one gal, is a lovely woman known as Empress Wu. She was known as "Treacherous Fox" and her story is so awesome and basically, I want a Netflix show about this woman. I will be reading up on her as I want to know more about her. Other women that I found to be very drawn to were: Ching Shih, Artemisia Gentileschi, Julie D'Aubigny, Lozen, Coccinelle (aka Jacqueline Charlotte Dufresnoy), Noor Inayat Khan, Irena Sendler and Constance Markievicz.
I think the best thing about the book is the writing. Jewell is so hilarious and she really has a way of putting things. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the amount of history, names and dates, I felt very at ease reading all of these stories because they were written with so much humour, compassion and care. I highlighted quite a bit in the book, just because the passages were funny. I do wish the whole thing was written in chronological order but putting them into different chapters was fine. I also wish some stories were longer but I know that it is hard to get information on some of the women.
I would definitely recommend this. This is required reading for everyone! Everyone should know about these women and it's just a shame that more people don't know about the women of the past.
----------------------------------------------
"Such is the anxiety of civilization after civilization over the idea that some women may have no interest in men, despite men being so endlessly interesting."
"...a Syrian scholar Bar Hebraeus quoted a bit of poetry in describing [Sorghaghtani Beki]: "if I were to see among the race of women another woman like this, I should say that the race of women was far superior to men." Which is basically the thirteenth-century equivalent of a guy saying, "You're not like other girls...""
"...a woman studying medicine was totally unheard of, let alone a woman treating the king. I suppose if you're the only one who can cure a man, they bend the rules. "Hmm, on the one hand I'm very ill and only you can save me. On the other, you seem to have a vagina. Whatever shall I do?""
"The next time you look at the night sky, make sure to remind whoever is attempting to share a romantic moment with you that so much of what we know about the stars is down to a room full of underpaid and underappreciated women scientists. If they are not put off by this fact, you may kiss them."
"It's possible that Murasaki [Shikibu] joined the court when her husband died after just two years of marriage, having been presented with the option to either remarry, or to join the women-only literary salon of the empress. What would you choose?"
"What a man you gave me, Lord of all givers.
He's a nasty old lump of wrinkles with shrivelled finger
bones and a bent back like a croaking crow." - an ICONIC poem (translated from Arabic) about a husband by a woman known only as Juhaifa Addibabiyya.
"Unfortunately, however, it was the 1870's, a time when many great men of learning and science firmly believed, in their logical and rational way, that higher education for women would lead to their infertility and deaths."
"Once, annoyed by an instructor giving her a "check ride" to verify her pilot's license, Pancho [Barnes] cut the engine mid-flight to freak him out and demonstrate how far beyond him she was in skill."
"... some tax collectors believed they could judge if girls were fifteen, and therefore old enough to be taxed, by stripping them and looking at their breasts. I would try to explain the logic of these assholes to you, but I fear it would do irreparable damage to both of our brains."
"One of Lillian [Ngoyi]'s earliest and most affecting memories was when she and her brother went to deliver laundry to one of her mother's white clients, and they were not allowed inside the house -but a dog was."
"You are a pansy, a bugger, a fornicator, a cuckold, a swine and a thief. If a phallus could become a palm tree, you would turn into a woodpecker." - another ICONIC poem by a woman named Wallada bint al-Mustakfi.
"Women have been there all along. They've been there, and they've been doing things! They've been relentlessly doing stuff, whether you knew about it or not!"
Of course this book didn't just make me feel anger. It made me feel so proud to be a woman. Reading stories of women who were so bad-ass and who just took no shit, was honestly a breath of fresh air. There were so many different women, the book was very diverse and inclusive. What I also loved was the fact that there were also stories about women who weren't good and pure. Stories about women who were ruthless and powerful and scary. At the start of the book, Jewell mentions to pick one woman from the book and look her up in more detail after finishing the book. I chose a few women but my number one gal, is a lovely woman known as Empress Wu. She was known as "Treacherous Fox" and her story is so awesome and basically, I want a Netflix show about this woman. I will be reading up on her as I want to know more about her. Other women that I found to be very drawn to were: Ching Shih, Artemisia Gentileschi, Julie D'Aubigny, Lozen, Coccinelle (aka Jacqueline Charlotte Dufresnoy), Noor Inayat Khan, Irena Sendler and Constance Markievicz.
I think the best thing about the book is the writing. Jewell is so hilarious and she really has a way of putting things. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the amount of history, names and dates, I felt very at ease reading all of these stories because they were written with so much humour, compassion and care. I highlighted quite a bit in the book, just because the passages were funny. I do wish the whole thing was written in chronological order but putting them into different chapters was fine. I also wish some stories were longer but I know that it is hard to get information on some of the women.
I would definitely recommend this. This is required reading for everyone! Everyone should know about these women and it's just a shame that more people don't know about the women of the past.
----------------------------------------------
"Such is the anxiety of civilization after civilization over the idea that some women may have no interest in men, despite men being so endlessly interesting."
"...a Syrian scholar Bar Hebraeus quoted a bit of poetry in describing [Sorghaghtani Beki]: "if I were to see among the race of women another woman like this, I should say that the race of women was far superior to men." Which is basically the thirteenth-century equivalent of a guy saying, "You're not like other girls...""
"...a woman studying medicine was totally unheard of, let alone a woman treating the king. I suppose if you're the only one who can cure a man, they bend the rules. "Hmm, on the one hand I'm very ill and only you can save me. On the other, you seem to have a vagina. Whatever shall I do?""
"The next time you look at the night sky, make sure to remind whoever is attempting to share a romantic moment with you that so much of what we know about the stars is down to a room full of underpaid and underappreciated women scientists. If they are not put off by this fact, you may kiss them."
"It's possible that Murasaki [Shikibu] joined the court when her husband died after just two years of marriage, having been presented with the option to either remarry, or to join the women-only literary salon of the empress. What would you choose?"
"What a man you gave me, Lord of all givers.
He's a nasty old lump of wrinkles with shrivelled finger
bones and a bent back like a croaking crow." - an ICONIC poem (translated from Arabic) about a husband by a woman known only as Juhaifa Addibabiyya.
"Unfortunately, however, it was the 1870's, a time when many great men of learning and science firmly believed, in their logical and rational way, that higher education for women would lead to their infertility and deaths."
"Once, annoyed by an instructor giving her a "check ride" to verify her pilot's license, Pancho [Barnes] cut the engine mid-flight to freak him out and demonstrate how far beyond him she was in skill."
"... some tax collectors believed they could judge if girls were fifteen, and therefore old enough to be taxed, by stripping them and looking at their breasts. I would try to explain the logic of these assholes to you, but I fear it would do irreparable damage to both of our brains."
"One of Lillian [Ngoyi]'s earliest and most affecting memories was when she and her brother went to deliver laundry to one of her mother's white clients, and they were not allowed inside the house -but a dog was."
"You are a pansy, a bugger, a fornicator, a cuckold, a swine and a thief. If a phallus could become a palm tree, you would turn into a woodpecker." - another ICONIC poem by a woman named Wallada bint al-Mustakfi.
"Women have been there all along. They've been there, and they've been doing things! They've been relentlessly doing stuff, whether you knew about it or not!"
November 29, 2021
Mai știți cum făceam noi, femeile, în copilărie, când nu puteam merge la baie fără vreo colegă? Așa îmi imaginez că face autoarea și acum. Hai cu mine la toaletă! Nu pot trece singură prin asta și trebuie să fim unite! Vai, dar baia bărbaților e lângă a noastră! Ne invadează intimitatea. Și peretele dintre ele sigur a fost făcut de bărbați. Normal, ăștia sunt peste tot! Și o femeie ar fi putut să facă peretele, dar i s-a permis? Nu! Deși bărbații ar fi trebuit să care materialele de construcții, că nu putem și noi să le facem chiar pe toate. Suntem puternice, dar totodată delicate...
Ce vreau să spun e că nu am citit nicio carte despre istorie care să fie mai puțin despre istorie decât asta. Pur și simplu, este o antologie de insulte la adresa bărbaților și glume care merg făcute în timp ce scuipi semințe la colțul blocului. Să o luăm ca exemplu pe poeta Sappho! Legenda spune că s-ar fi sinucis după ce a rănit-o un bărbat. Autoarea sugerează că s-ar fi sinucis pentru că ăla a iritat-o și plictisit-o. După acest verdict, devine indignată că opere precum Odiseea lui Homer au fost păstrate, în timp ce poeziile lui Sappho s-au pierdut. De ce?! Pentru că era femeie, evident, nu pentru că ar fi scris în halul pe care îl puteți vedea mai jos. Poate ea și-a aruncat poeziile în foc, pentru că nu avea poze sau vaze la îndemână. Poate i le-a distrus altcineva sau i-a luat casa foc. Atâtea variante, dar autoarea se duce direct spre victimizare și discriminare.
,,Aidoma zeilor îl consider
Pe acela care stă în fața ta
Când are norocul să-ți soarbă dulcele șoapte
De-atât de aproape
Alături de surâsul tău fermecător."
Superficială, jignitoare, nedocumentată. Cu greu și dezgust față de atitudinea autoarei am terminat-o. Recenzia aici: https://bit.ly/3I476Ok.
Ce vreau să spun e că nu am citit nicio carte despre istorie care să fie mai puțin despre istorie decât asta. Pur și simplu, este o antologie de insulte la adresa bărbaților și glume care merg făcute în timp ce scuipi semințe la colțul blocului. Să o luăm ca exemplu pe poeta Sappho! Legenda spune că s-ar fi sinucis după ce a rănit-o un bărbat. Autoarea sugerează că s-ar fi sinucis pentru că ăla a iritat-o și plictisit-o. După acest verdict, devine indignată că opere precum Odiseea lui Homer au fost păstrate, în timp ce poeziile lui Sappho s-au pierdut. De ce?! Pentru că era femeie, evident, nu pentru că ar fi scris în halul pe care îl puteți vedea mai jos. Poate ea și-a aruncat poeziile în foc, pentru că nu avea poze sau vaze la îndemână. Poate i le-a distrus altcineva sau i-a luat casa foc. Atâtea variante, dar autoarea se duce direct spre victimizare și discriminare.
,,Aidoma zeilor îl consider
Pe acela care stă în fața ta
Când are norocul să-ți soarbă dulcele șoapte
De-atât de aproape
Alături de surâsul tău fermecător."
Superficială, jignitoare, nedocumentată. Cu greu și dezgust față de atitudinea autoarei am terminat-o. Recenzia aici: https://bit.ly/3I476Ok.
February 14, 2018
This book would be half as long if it weren't brimming with deeply unfunny jokes and commentary. The irony of a history book trying to be hip and missing the mark completely with already-dated phrases and slang was not lost on me. It's also very badly edited just from a grammatical POV. An extreme waste of time for anyone hoping to learn about great women.
February 17, 2022
I have so much to say about this book! Both good and bad things. As the subtitle on the book makes it clear, it’s about “unknown” women of history who did great things. I added quotation marks as I think anyone with a decent bit of general knowledge will know a few of them, or so one hopes. So, let’s begin with the good points of this book.
The good.
- Giving a voice to little known or unknown women in history is an amazing idea. As I’ve mentioned before, I am really into Herstory, so I admire Hannah Jewell’s work on this.
- There is a huge scope of backgrounds for the women that were chosen for the book, including a variety of nationalities, time periods, races, religions, sexual orientations and even genders. This is truly impressive.
- By using informal language, Jewell manages to make the narrative accessible to readers who may not be used to reading history.
The bad.
- While the informal language makes the writing style easy to read, it becomes too familiar at times. I read the book on the Kindle app so I had no idea there was a glossary of “in” terms that are used and I actually had to Google the meaning. I’m not even 30… that being said, I don’t spend much time on social media. To give you a few examples, Emperor Justinian is described as a "woke bae". I am not joking. Or things are lit. Or some lady’s life is a glow up (I’m not even sure I’m using that properly). I believe that can alienate a lot of readers, especially people who are not au fait with such terminology.
- The sheer amount of swearing in this book really turned me off and I’m no prude. I used to swear a lot and then I had a child. But do we need the f-word in every chapter? I don’t believe so. There are way to express oneself without swearing, which Jewell is perfectly capable of doing as she had the decency to at least not joke or swear in the darker chapters of the book. Sometimes the jokes and foul language just seemed to be a way of filling up some space in the book, as some entries are really short due to the fact there is very little information out there about some of the women.
- There seems to be some confusion with dates. For example, several times we were given a date as BCE when it should have been CE/AD. 500 BCE is really not the same as 500…
- There is a lot of man-hating in there. I get it, I’m a feminist myself. Women have been wronged throughout history and are still being wronged today. While one can explain how women have been wronged, man-hating is not going to solve the problem, it’s just doing exactly the same but the other way round.
- There is also a lot of British-hating. Yes, the British Empire was responsible for a lot of atrocities and this needs to be recognised. But I found the constant British bashing tiring after a while. It’s similar to the man-hating issue, it doesn’t achieve anything.
- Oh, and there’s a bit in the book where the author admits she “couldn’t be bothered” researching some topic. Really? You’re writing a history book and can’t be bothered researching your stuff? As Jewell herself would say, like, smh.
- While there are different parts on different themes, the entries on each woman don’t seem to follow any logical order, be it alphabetical or chronological. The glossary isn’t in alphabetical order either.
In Conclusion.
Hannah Jewell did a tremendous amount of work to bring these women back to life and hopefully it will allow readers to learn about them. I personally discovered a lot of new people that I had never heard about and learned a great amount of new things. It also gave me new ideas to explore in my future readings. However, I was really put off by the writing and had to force myself to carry on several times, as I just wanted to close the book never to open it again. Hannah Jewell was previously a writer for BuzzFeedUK, so I believe her writing style would have worked really well for that. A book is not the same, though, and I think it just doesn’t work.
Disclaimer: I received a free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thanks to NetGalley and SourceBooks.
The good.
- Giving a voice to little known or unknown women in history is an amazing idea. As I’ve mentioned before, I am really into Herstory, so I admire Hannah Jewell’s work on this.
- There is a huge scope of backgrounds for the women that were chosen for the book, including a variety of nationalities, time periods, races, religions, sexual orientations and even genders. This is truly impressive.
- By using informal language, Jewell manages to make the narrative accessible to readers who may not be used to reading history.
The bad.
- While the informal language makes the writing style easy to read, it becomes too familiar at times. I read the book on the Kindle app so I had no idea there was a glossary of “in” terms that are used and I actually had to Google the meaning. I’m not even 30… that being said, I don’t spend much time on social media. To give you a few examples, Emperor Justinian is described as a "woke bae". I am not joking. Or things are lit. Or some lady’s life is a glow up (I’m not even sure I’m using that properly). I believe that can alienate a lot of readers, especially people who are not au fait with such terminology.
- The sheer amount of swearing in this book really turned me off and I’m no prude. I used to swear a lot and then I had a child. But do we need the f-word in every chapter? I don’t believe so. There are way to express oneself without swearing, which Jewell is perfectly capable of doing as she had the decency to at least not joke or swear in the darker chapters of the book. Sometimes the jokes and foul language just seemed to be a way of filling up some space in the book, as some entries are really short due to the fact there is very little information out there about some of the women.
- There seems to be some confusion with dates. For example, several times we were given a date as BCE when it should have been CE/AD. 500 BCE is really not the same as 500…
- There is a lot of man-hating in there. I get it, I’m a feminist myself. Women have been wronged throughout history and are still being wronged today. While one can explain how women have been wronged, man-hating is not going to solve the problem, it’s just doing exactly the same but the other way round.
- There is also a lot of British-hating. Yes, the British Empire was responsible for a lot of atrocities and this needs to be recognised. But I found the constant British bashing tiring after a while. It’s similar to the man-hating issue, it doesn’t achieve anything.
- Oh, and there’s a bit in the book where the author admits she “couldn’t be bothered” researching some topic. Really? You’re writing a history book and can’t be bothered researching your stuff? As Jewell herself would say, like, smh.
- While there are different parts on different themes, the entries on each woman don’t seem to follow any logical order, be it alphabetical or chronological. The glossary isn’t in alphabetical order either.
In Conclusion.
Hannah Jewell did a tremendous amount of work to bring these women back to life and hopefully it will allow readers to learn about them. I personally discovered a lot of new people that I had never heard about and learned a great amount of new things. It also gave me new ideas to explore in my future readings. However, I was really put off by the writing and had to force myself to carry on several times, as I just wanted to close the book never to open it again. Hannah Jewell was previously a writer for BuzzFeedUK, so I believe her writing style would have worked really well for that. A book is not the same, though, and I think it just doesn’t work.
Disclaimer: I received a free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thanks to NetGalley and SourceBooks.
December 25, 2017
Great topic but not a book for people that enjoy learning about history. It’s a shame that nuggets of interesting information hide between the authors apparent dislike of men, unfunny commentary and just general uninteresting BS to fill page space.
If you think you would enjoy 400+ pages of click bait - look no further.
I found Wikipedia an excellent companion read.
If you think you would enjoy 400+ pages of click bait - look no further.
I found Wikipedia an excellent companion read.
February 7, 2022
This book was basic even for 2017, in 2022 it's cringe af.
It was written by a former Buzzfeed writer, and (groan) it damn well shows... Every paragraph tries so hard to be edgy and ironic, and the little context and information the book offers is often lost among the "jokes". This is a shame because the history of each of these women is actually interesting by itself, and they deserve better than being the punchline to a "sticking it to the patriarchy" joke.
I couldn't go through it all. With great leniency I'll say that the only target audience this book could still have is teenagers, as no high-school graduate should still find this either hilarious or informative. Grab the books' contents and then check wikipedia, you'll spend your time more wisely this way.
It was written by a former Buzzfeed writer, and (groan) it damn well shows... Every paragraph tries so hard to be edgy and ironic, and the little context and information the book offers is often lost among the "jokes". This is a shame because the history of each of these women is actually interesting by itself, and they deserve better than being the punchline to a "sticking it to the patriarchy" joke.
I couldn't go through it all. With great leniency I'll say that the only target audience this book could still have is teenagers, as no high-school graduate should still find this either hilarious or informative. Grab the books' contents and then check wikipedia, you'll spend your time more wisely this way.
May 16, 2020
Okay, honestly, this book was so hard to rate. On one hand I enjoyed it, the premise is great and a book like this is honestly so important, on the other hand, I really didn't like the writing style and kept getting annoyed every now and then. So like? What do I base my rating on? I ended up on a 2 star, but it's not really 'bad' per se, so it's weird. But I've decided to stick with it. Here's my thoughts which are probably not coherent, but hopefully makes the 2 star make a lil more sense.
What I liked:
- The entire concept. This book highlights 100 (technically 103, but the title says 100 so...) 'nasty' women throughout history. The book basically defines a nasty woman as someone who defied expectations of their time, did really awesome things in one way or another, or simply strayed from the stereotype of women in their time, and all of them are awesome. I had heard of approximately 10 of these women before, and even then, I didn't really know too much about them. So for that, this book is great. It highlights amazing women, who deserves more recognition.
- The diversity in this book is also great. It highlights the stories of women from different time periods, nationalities, sexualities, religions, ethnicities, and gender identities. The diversity in the backgrounds were really great, and one of my favourite aspects of the entire book.
- To a certain extent - the writing. The information is presented to the reader in a very easily digestible way. Not at any point did I feel like the information was too overwhelming to take in, or that there was too much at once. That was the only thing I appreciated about the writing tho, cause... we'll get back to the writing in the 'what I didn't like in the book' section.
- I will get back to why I hate the writing overall, but I have to say that I really appreciated how the author dropped the informalities and the writing turned more serious when she got to the chapters regarding women who did incredibly important work, during WW2. It was pretty much the only time she seemed serious about anything in her writing, and I did appreciated that it was for those specific chapters. Their stories could never be laughable, and I really appreciated that the author didn't try to, more or less, make light of their stories the way she had in earlier chapters.
Okay, moving on to, the things I really disliked:
- THE WRITING STYLE. The author uses incredibly informal language, and plays so much on trying to be funny. And the humor in this is so not my kind of humor, and at several points I rolled my eyes, and I had to put the book down once, because I was so annoyed with the attempts to be funny, which I obviously didn't find funny at all.
- How little serious the writing was. While it definitely made the book easier to read, I also found that the incredibly simple writing with the terrible humor, almost seemed like it was making light of the stories. Like, a few of the chapters seemed like they were made up of just jokes, and not really a lot of the story of the woman that was being talked about. I literally was just sat there, thinking: what is the point of writing this chapter, if you were only going to fill it with your bad jokes, and completely disregard facts?
- The amount of stories in the book. I think it sorta sabotaged itself with that. If the author had just, included half the amount and done more research, I think the book could've really benefited from that. Some of the stories felt half-assed, and didn't really have much info. And of course, for some of these women, there aren't that much information. But in some instances, the author legit writes that she "couldn't be bothered" to research a specific topic? I mean, really? You're writing a history book... and you cannot be bothered to research, about the topic you will be writing you history book about? Do y'all see where this just does not add up? No? Just me????
- The sheer amount of man hate in this book. I get it, this book is supposed to highlight feminism. And I see myself as a feminist too, don't get me wrong. Put the amount of hate towards men in general in this book. It's extreme. And yeah, women have been wronged a lot throughout history, there is no hiding that fact. But that problem isn't gonna be fixed, by turning all the hate on men? Feminism isn't "WOMEN ARE SUPERIOR", you know, it's about equality. And I just really did not appreciate how much the author hated on men, not even specific men, just men in general.
- Similarly: the british-hate. Yeah, the british empire did a lot of messed up sh*t throughout history, but the amount of hait on the UK and the brits, just no. Not a fan, it's just too much.
- The swearing. This is a rarity. I swear a lot personally, like a lot. And I'm not against swearing in books. I actually enjoy some nice real swearing in my books. But in this it was honestly just too much to be completely honest. It was several times per page for some chapters and I just... it really just put me off in this context? There are other ways to express yourself, especially in a non-fiction work, than using f*ck every other sentence.
Overall:
This book is important and the work Hannah Jewell has put down to highlight the stories of these women, is impressive and again, so, so important. The was this was executed was not my favourite though. The humor was not my kinda humor, the informal writing style and the 'bad' jokes took away from my enjoyment, and overall the writing with all it encompassed, really stopped me from fully enjoying this. Several times I debated putting the book down and not reading on, because I hated the writing so much. I definitely think that some other people would have the complete opposite opinion on the writing, so by all means, I would recommend people to read it. But maybe try to read a sample first to see if you enjoy the writing if you are gonna read it... cause for me personally, it was a complete miss. 2/5 stars, I'm sticking with that. I did enjoy the concept and the stories of the women... but the writing dragged this so far down.
What I liked:
- The entire concept. This book highlights 100 (technically 103, but the title says 100 so...) 'nasty' women throughout history. The book basically defines a nasty woman as someone who defied expectations of their time, did really awesome things in one way or another, or simply strayed from the stereotype of women in their time, and all of them are awesome. I had heard of approximately 10 of these women before, and even then, I didn't really know too much about them. So for that, this book is great. It highlights amazing women, who deserves more recognition.
- The diversity in this book is also great. It highlights the stories of women from different time periods, nationalities, sexualities, religions, ethnicities, and gender identities. The diversity in the backgrounds were really great, and one of my favourite aspects of the entire book.
- To a certain extent - the writing. The information is presented to the reader in a very easily digestible way. Not at any point did I feel like the information was too overwhelming to take in, or that there was too much at once. That was the only thing I appreciated about the writing tho, cause... we'll get back to the writing in the 'what I didn't like in the book' section.
- I will get back to why I hate the writing overall, but I have to say that I really appreciated how the author dropped the informalities and the writing turned more serious when she got to the chapters regarding women who did incredibly important work, during WW2. It was pretty much the only time she seemed serious about anything in her writing, and I did appreciated that it was for those specific chapters. Their stories could never be laughable, and I really appreciated that the author didn't try to, more or less, make light of their stories the way she had in earlier chapters.
Okay, moving on to, the things I really disliked:
- THE WRITING STYLE. The author uses incredibly informal language, and plays so much on trying to be funny. And the humor in this is so not my kind of humor, and at several points I rolled my eyes, and I had to put the book down once, because I was so annoyed with the attempts to be funny, which I obviously didn't find funny at all.
- How little serious the writing was. While it definitely made the book easier to read, I also found that the incredibly simple writing with the terrible humor, almost seemed like it was making light of the stories. Like, a few of the chapters seemed like they were made up of just jokes, and not really a lot of the story of the woman that was being talked about. I literally was just sat there, thinking: what is the point of writing this chapter, if you were only going to fill it with your bad jokes, and completely disregard facts?
- The amount of stories in the book. I think it sorta sabotaged itself with that. If the author had just, included half the amount and done more research, I think the book could've really benefited from that. Some of the stories felt half-assed, and didn't really have much info. And of course, for some of these women, there aren't that much information. But in some instances, the author legit writes that she "couldn't be bothered" to research a specific topic? I mean, really? You're writing a history book... and you cannot be bothered to research, about the topic you will be writing you history book about? Do y'all see where this just does not add up? No? Just me????
- The sheer amount of man hate in this book. I get it, this book is supposed to highlight feminism. And I see myself as a feminist too, don't get me wrong. Put the amount of hate towards men in general in this book. It's extreme. And yeah, women have been wronged a lot throughout history, there is no hiding that fact. But that problem isn't gonna be fixed, by turning all the hate on men? Feminism isn't "WOMEN ARE SUPERIOR", you know, it's about equality. And I just really did not appreciate how much the author hated on men, not even specific men, just men in general.
- Similarly: the british-hate. Yeah, the british empire did a lot of messed up sh*t throughout history, but the amount of hait on the UK and the brits, just no. Not a fan, it's just too much.
- The swearing. This is a rarity. I swear a lot personally, like a lot. And I'm not against swearing in books. I actually enjoy some nice real swearing in my books. But in this it was honestly just too much to be completely honest. It was several times per page for some chapters and I just... it really just put me off in this context? There are other ways to express yourself, especially in a non-fiction work, than using f*ck every other sentence.
Overall:
This book is important and the work Hannah Jewell has put down to highlight the stories of these women, is impressive and again, so, so important. The was this was executed was not my favourite though. The humor was not my kinda humor, the informal writing style and the 'bad' jokes took away from my enjoyment, and overall the writing with all it encompassed, really stopped me from fully enjoying this. Several times I debated putting the book down and not reading on, because I hated the writing so much. I definitely think that some other people would have the complete opposite opinion on the writing, so by all means, I would recommend people to read it. But maybe try to read a sample first to see if you enjoy the writing if you are gonna read it... cause for me personally, it was a complete miss. 2/5 stars, I'm sticking with that. I did enjoy the concept and the stories of the women... but the writing dragged this so far down.
January 9, 2022
Mi-a plăcut cartea asta din punct de vedere istoric, fiindcă am aflat despre o grămadă de femei puternice și curajoase pe care nu le-am mai întâlnit până acum nicăieri. În plus, am „citit” cartea în format audio, iar naratoarea a fost pe gustul meu și mi-a ținut atenția captivă.
DAR! E un mare dar aici... Nu mi-a plăcut tonul autoarei Hannah Jewell. Mi-am dat seama că e feministă, dar e genul ăla de feminism supărat pe toți bărbații de pe lume, iar eu nu-s de acord cu așa ceva. Tonul ei a fost zeflemitor, și deși înțeleg că aceasta nu s-a vrut a fi o carte extra serioasă, ci una ușor de digerat, pe mine totuși m-au deranjat comentariile ei complet neavenite la adresa bărbaților care au gravitat în jurul acestor femei de care vorbește ea. Chiar dacă s-au comportat așa cum spune ea, linia e extrem de fină între o carte ușor digerabilă și un text de mahala. Iar pe alocuri, Jewell depășește linia în extrema cealaltă.
În rest, a fost o carte care m-a distrat și nu regret deloc că am parcurs-o. 11 ORE!! :)) Atât are audiobookul. Dar au meritat. 3 stele e un rating sincer și perfect pentru cartea asta.
DAR! E un mare dar aici... Nu mi-a plăcut tonul autoarei Hannah Jewell. Mi-am dat seama că e feministă, dar e genul ăla de feminism supărat pe toți bărbații de pe lume, iar eu nu-s de acord cu așa ceva. Tonul ei a fost zeflemitor, și deși înțeleg că aceasta nu s-a vrut a fi o carte extra serioasă, ci una ușor de digerat, pe mine totuși m-au deranjat comentariile ei complet neavenite la adresa bărbaților care au gravitat în jurul acestor femei de care vorbește ea. Chiar dacă s-au comportat așa cum spune ea, linia e extrem de fină între o carte ușor digerabilă și un text de mahala. Iar pe alocuri, Jewell depășește linia în extrema cealaltă.
În rest, a fost o carte care m-a distrat și nu regret deloc că am parcurs-o. 11 ORE!! :)) Atât are audiobookul. Dar au meritat. 3 stele e un rating sincer și perfect pentru cartea asta.
January 12, 2021
Laikam gan vairāk 3,5 zvaigznes, nedaudz kaitināja autores valoda. Kopumā labs uzziņu materiāls. Īsas esejas par sievietēm dažādos laikos, kuras nav iederējušās un nav pieņēmušas sava laika uzspiestos ierobežojumus. Šeit ir pieminētas zinātnieces, dzejnieces, karavadones, sabuedriskās darbinieces utt.
Varētu šo grāmatu īsi raksturot kā " Vakara pasakas dumpīgām meitenēm" adult versiju.
Varētu šo grāmatu īsi raksturot kā " Vakara pasakas dumpīgām meitenēm" adult versiju.
October 5, 2021
Nema veze što sam pročitala 50 stranica, bolje sad da joj dam jednu zvezdicu nego posle -10
February 26, 2023
Ar fi fost o carte foarte interesantă despre toate aceste femei care au schimbat cu adevărat societăți, mentalități și culturi prin curajul și munca lor. Dar stilul, care se vrea modern și amuzant, eșuează în vulgaritate și intoleranță, iar paginile sunt încărcate de ură de clasă, rasă și gen care parcă încearcă să compenseze misoginia trecutului cu o misandrie extremă, la fel de dezgustătoare.
August 6, 2018
Didn't finish reading this. The writing is embarrassing. If you're going to write a book about women of history, research the history. Don't openly admit you're not into that, bash words together to fill the page and throw in some man hating for the fun of it. A great idea immensely trashed.
November 17, 2017
Son won in the Goodreads Giveaways - brilliant book, well worth a read!
December 21, 2020
I got this book for Christmas because I love women's history and have a history degree, two things which made me entirely the wrong audience. It's written in this terrible, meant-to-be-funny style which chooses quickly dated terms and references (Pokemon Go, YOLO) over substance. Several of her bibliography references are internet encyclopedia pages and blogs with a clear bias, so I'm not sure where her editor and fact checker were. If the sources wouldn't be accepted in a freshman history class, they shouldn't be in the book.
There are so many great women's history books that are well written and don't sacrifice facts for silly, basic, feminism-101 asides. Check out Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Gail Collins, and Sara M. Evans instead.
There are so many great women's history books that are well written and don't sacrifice facts for silly, basic, feminism-101 asides. Check out Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Gail Collins, and Sara M. Evans instead.
March 29, 2020
found this to be a little...disappointing? And I feel sadly about that, because I do so love anthology biographies about history's lost women. But. Here's two problems of mine: intended audience and tone/style.
Let's delve into the intended audience, because this one just might be on me. This is not my first feminist biography anthology rodeo. I've known about Ida B. Wells and Sappho for a long time (perhaps due to my time spent on Tumblr...), so seeing these names in this book about unknown women felt strange to me. They aren't unknown--they're pretty dang well known! And then there were some names that I recognized, such as Hypatia and Olympe de Gouges, that I didn't really know as well. But after a little tiff with my boyfriend, he made a very good point: "Who's Sappho?" Um. Excuse me? Okay. Perhaps this is more of a feminism 101 text, whereas I'm getting my master's degree. I'm an avid reader of these sorts of texts, so of course I know about some of these women. Maybe I'm just not the intended audience--this book does seem to read a little young, and it's certainly at a different level of critical thinking.
But. If you're going to put a product into the world--no matter what it is--I think you should do your research first to see what the heck has been put out there, too. Which is part of the reason why I was a little frustrated at seeing Sappho and Ida B. Wells, and not so much Hypatia and Olympe de Gouges. Two of those women have had lots of information circulated about them, especially in the past 5-10 years, and the other two have not, to my knowledge. So, by including Sappho and Wells, we have now excluded 2 other actually unknown women from this text.
So there's a give and take there. And it's a hard balance to find, I think, when discussing some already kinda well-known people to people who genuinely haven't introduced to them yet.
Yet here's the other thing--the tone of voice. According to the flap, Hannah Jewell is a pop culture host at the Washington Post and has written for Buzzfeed UK. It shows. I think some authors do a really good job at letting their media personality shine through (like Lilly Singh!), but this felt a little...sloppy. I mean, I was here to read about women and their incredible feats and the things they've done that nobody knows about! And yet...I got jokes. A lot of them. A lot of self-deprecating, name-dropping, man-hating jokes. When there's one or two in a section, it's fine, but when some biographies range from 1 paragraph to 4 pages...that's a problem. (Which, also, why was there such a huge difference in range? I'm sure that information about these ladies had a large margin, but surely there must have been some way to equalize them...). Additionally, she seems to favor her own jokes over some history that would likely actually be very interesting: "[Ching Shih] was such a fucking good pirate that she lived long enough to retire from piracy, and take up bingo or some shit instead. (She actually got married, had a kid, and opened a gambling house)." Wait, WHAT. You're making some old lady joke instead of telling me what little information we might have about how her marriage was? How her kid was raised? Literally anything about her gambling house? Keep your secrets, lady.
Additionally, now that I've just skimmed through it a bit once more, I want more biography and less "Hell yeah! Women!!! Do great things!!!" And this is me saying this. Also also, if you need a glossary for the slang in your book and not for important concepts not everyone might be familiar with yet....what are you doing. Is slang and internet speak more important than teaching people about all the very serious research you've done on these women? Hmm.
And now, since you've made it this far, I will say that there were some good things about this book. Jewell goes from the BCs to just a hundred or so years ago, and discusses women who may have been myths to women of various different countries and various different occupations. We have mathematicians, poets, pilots, queens, and more. As far as her variants goes, it's pretty dang good.
This might be a good book for you if you're a teen, or if you've never read a book like this before. You might take her jokes less seriously than I do, or you may even have more of an attention span after reading about historical events as though she was telling it to me drunk. But hey, to each their own.
Review cross-listed here!
Let's delve into the intended audience, because this one just might be on me. This is not my first feminist biography anthology rodeo. I've known about Ida B. Wells and Sappho for a long time (perhaps due to my time spent on Tumblr...), so seeing these names in this book about unknown women felt strange to me. They aren't unknown--they're pretty dang well known! And then there were some names that I recognized, such as Hypatia and Olympe de Gouges, that I didn't really know as well. But after a little tiff with my boyfriend, he made a very good point: "Who's Sappho?" Um. Excuse me? Okay. Perhaps this is more of a feminism 101 text, whereas I'm getting my master's degree. I'm an avid reader of these sorts of texts, so of course I know about some of these women. Maybe I'm just not the intended audience--this book does seem to read a little young, and it's certainly at a different level of critical thinking.
But. If you're going to put a product into the world--no matter what it is--I think you should do your research first to see what the heck has been put out there, too. Which is part of the reason why I was a little frustrated at seeing Sappho and Ida B. Wells, and not so much Hypatia and Olympe de Gouges. Two of those women have had lots of information circulated about them, especially in the past 5-10 years, and the other two have not, to my knowledge. So, by including Sappho and Wells, we have now excluded 2 other actually unknown women from this text.
So there's a give and take there. And it's a hard balance to find, I think, when discussing some already kinda well-known people to people who genuinely haven't introduced to them yet.
Yet here's the other thing--the tone of voice. According to the flap, Hannah Jewell is a pop culture host at the Washington Post and has written for Buzzfeed UK. It shows. I think some authors do a really good job at letting their media personality shine through (like Lilly Singh!), but this felt a little...sloppy. I mean, I was here to read about women and their incredible feats and the things they've done that nobody knows about! And yet...I got jokes. A lot of them. A lot of self-deprecating, name-dropping, man-hating jokes. When there's one or two in a section, it's fine, but when some biographies range from 1 paragraph to 4 pages...that's a problem. (Which, also, why was there such a huge difference in range? I'm sure that information about these ladies had a large margin, but surely there must have been some way to equalize them...). Additionally, she seems to favor her own jokes over some history that would likely actually be very interesting: "[Ching Shih] was such a fucking good pirate that she lived long enough to retire from piracy, and take up bingo or some shit instead. (She actually got married, had a kid, and opened a gambling house)." Wait, WHAT. You're making some old lady joke instead of telling me what little information we might have about how her marriage was? How her kid was raised? Literally anything about her gambling house? Keep your secrets, lady.
Additionally, now that I've just skimmed through it a bit once more, I want more biography and less "Hell yeah! Women!!! Do great things!!!" And this is me saying this. Also also, if you need a glossary for the slang in your book and not for important concepts not everyone might be familiar with yet....what are you doing. Is slang and internet speak more important than teaching people about all the very serious research you've done on these women? Hmm.
And now, since you've made it this far, I will say that there were some good things about this book. Jewell goes from the BCs to just a hundred or so years ago, and discusses women who may have been myths to women of various different countries and various different occupations. We have mathematicians, poets, pilots, queens, and more. As far as her variants goes, it's pretty dang good.
This might be a good book for you if you're a teen, or if you've never read a book like this before. You might take her jokes less seriously than I do, or you may even have more of an attention span after reading about historical events as though she was telling it to me drunk. But hey, to each their own.
Review cross-listed here!
July 4, 2018
I've been a little underwhelmed by some of these types of collections in the past - they include a lot of women I already know, they're not very in-depth, they're missing things, they're very white/Western-centric. But this one was different. It included SO many women of color, several trans women, there was an entire section dedicated to women who fought against Nazis. It also addresses the fact that some of these fascinating, powerful women were also not exactly great people and actually kind of murder-y, which is an important thing to consider! Women could be vicious murderers to make sure Things Got Done and while we shouldn't CELEBRATE murder, we should know it happened. There were a lot of women I'd never heard of and I was actually mad nobody ever taught me about them. I also adored the writing - it's very voice-y, it's funny and sarcastic/snarky and approachable. Jewell included some poignant moments where she addressed the current state of the world and the parallels to the history.
Overall, I just loved this collection a lot more than I've loved similar collections and I'll definitely be getting a finished copy for my shelves - I might even get rid of the others I still have since there's so much overlap. It's a fantastic resource. (There is a lot of cursing, so maybe not the best for young teens? But still great for teens.)
Overall, I just loved this collection a lot more than I've loved similar collections and I'll definitely be getting a finished copy for my shelves - I might even get rid of the others I still have since there's so much overlap. It's a fantastic resource. (There is a lot of cursing, so maybe not the best for young teens? But still great for teens.)
June 17, 2021
3,5, dar hai că rotunjesc la 4 steluțe. Interesantă carte, dar cred că ar fi fost mai bine s-o citesc pe bucățele, nu toată într-o singură zi. :)))
August 2, 2021
Jesus take the wheel. It's sad that children's books are more feminist and informative than this glorified blog post in book form. Jokes fell flat, it gave me a vibe of *insert hello fellow kids meme* someone who just got on social media and learned the vernacular and said "imma use all of it". Surprised there weren't actual outdated memes printed in it. Also, no Olga of Kiev? Shame! SHAME! But of course, no Olga because she doesn't fit the man-hating so called feminist narrative. Mostly, I am sad and disappointed because reading about history's awesome forgotten women is something I really love. Do better Hannah Jewell.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 15, 2018
Sources: The headers of wikipedia - or a friend's self published book - or the first 10mn of a BBC podcast. But rewritten like a Buzzfeed listicle. I asked for a refund.
March 23, 2019
In many ways this book is a collection of BuzzFeed clickbait stapled together. It has the same style and sarcastic commentary designed to appeal to millennials - and is annoying more often than not.
So why did I give it 4 stars instead of 2 or 3? Because it is a book that absolutely needed to be written.
A collection stories about remarkable, daring and relatively unknown women? Yes please. Think of it like a tasting plate - you take a bite of 100 different snacks to know which food you want to invest time in exploring some more.
I loved the variety of stories, from all walks of life and all around the globe. In that respect the author did an excellent job. This is the kind of book that needs sequels, spinoff and other authors to flood the market with similar content. Because these stories need to be heard and talked about, and have the power to make people realise that women absolutely helped shaped history and the world as it is today.
My preference would just be to lower the commentary and up the historical/story detail.
So why did I give it 4 stars instead of 2 or 3? Because it is a book that absolutely needed to be written.
A collection stories about remarkable, daring and relatively unknown women? Yes please. Think of it like a tasting plate - you take a bite of 100 different snacks to know which food you want to invest time in exploring some more.
I loved the variety of stories, from all walks of life and all around the globe. In that respect the author did an excellent job. This is the kind of book that needs sequels, spinoff and other authors to flood the market with similar content. Because these stories need to be heard and talked about, and have the power to make people realise that women absolutely helped shaped history and the world as it is today.
My preference would just be to lower the commentary and up the historical/story detail.
April 15, 2018
The idea of the book is to be welcomed - to pay tribute to fearless and remarkable women throughout the history who at the time and due to being a woman did not receive the applause they most certainly deserved. However, by the style of writing I cannot say that the author does treat these women with due respect. I found the authors remarks and comments forced and not hilarious at all and rather irritating (more like blowing her own trumpet). At least I got some thoughts about further reading.
Read
December 13, 2017This book was sent to me by the publisher, Hachette, at no cost. RRP $32.99 trade paperback; it's available now.
This is a great idea for a book, obviously; it's similar in concept to Cranky Ladies of History although with a more pointed political stick, given the timing.
So... look. I have a few issues with it. Some of these are particularly my issues and may not be a problem for other people. So let me start with the good things.
1. There are women in here I've never heard of. And that includes in the historical section, not just in the more modern sections. That's awesome. And is largely because...
2. The women aren't just European. That is also awesome. The opening section on Wonderful Ancient Weirdos includes Seondeok of Silla (Korea), Khayzoun (Yemen/ Baghdada), and Subh (Basque/Cordoba), as well as Sappho and Hatshepsut and others.
3. It acknowledges some of the problems with sources, and that info about women can be hard to come at. Too true.
But. Hmm. I'm actually writing this review before I finish reading it, for two reasons. It's going to take me a long time to read because each entry is only a couple of pages long, and I find that exhausting... and I'm not sure I actually will read the whole thing. But since I got it to review, I wanted to write something about it close to publication.
The above points are absolutely reasons to buy and flick through this book. It's got a bit of swearing so it's not quite right for ten year olds, but 15 years olds? oh yes. Do it. Have it on the shelf ready to pull out to point out just a few examples of women being awesome scientists or what have you. However... like I said. Some things rub me the wrong way.
1. The introduction includes this: "Where there are mistakes, forgive me. I have done the best I can, and it turns out there is a lot of history out there which I have shoved into my eye sockets. processed through the lukewarm innards of my brain, and squeezed through my fingers. It's inevitable that some things will have gotten lost on that perilous, squidgy journey" (4). And... it really made me uncomfortable. Why is she disparaging her intelligence? Why is she blase about mistakes? By all means acknowledge there may be some, and I know she's being humourous, but this way of presenting just irked me.
2. The first chapter is "Wonderful ancient weirdos". I guess she was going for alliteration but these are powerful women she's discussing, and she's calling them weirdos? That's sending the wrong message, in my book.
3. Also on this chapter: ancient? Uh, no. Hatshepsut, sure. Sappho, yes. But Margery Kempe, Hildegard von Bingen, and the others are all medieval, or at best early medieval. These terms matter, for me, because the context is important. Everything before the Industrial Revolution is not ancient.
4. I don't love the language. No, this isn't a tone argument. This is definitely the most idisyncratic complaint, and your mileage may well vary. For instance, Hildegard's regime described thus: "The strict regime of the convent demanded that each day the nuns have... eight hours of manual labour, which entailed, I dunno, putting up retaining walls and stuff" (26). That's irksome for me.
5. Verging on not caring about historical accuracy: "This is my book, and everyone gets laid" (10), on whether Hatshepsut and her chief advisor were lovers. Just nooo.
6. Historical accuracy again: I skipped to the chapter on Alexandra Kollontai, and I can't tell you how pleased I am that she got a chapter! but it says that International Women's Day was February 7th by the Russian calendar, in 1917... but it was Feb 23. That's just careless. Also? "Sorry, New Zealand, I know you gave women [the right to vote] in 1893, but you're just so little and far away" (376). Far away from whom? Are only Americans going to read this?
7. The end of Seondeok's chapter: "Ugh, men" (18).
8. Also, they're not arranged in chronological order, within their thematic chapters, and that drives me batty.
9. Also not in order, this time alphabetical, is the Old People Glossary, which in itself (despite my comments on the language) is quote amusing. I'm fine with using modern slang in these sorts of biographies; I think it can make them much more approachable. But why, why would you not put the words in alphabetical order??
So... there you go. Decide for yourself how annoying these issues are vs having a handy reference to Kollontai and Rosa Luxembourg, Mergery Kempe and Sappho, Queen Nanny of the Maroons and Sojourner Truth, Hypatia and Nana Asma'u and 92 other women on the shelf.
This is a great idea for a book, obviously; it's similar in concept to Cranky Ladies of History although with a more pointed political stick, given the timing.
So... look. I have a few issues with it. Some of these are particularly my issues and may not be a problem for other people. So let me start with the good things.
1. There are women in here I've never heard of. And that includes in the historical section, not just in the more modern sections. That's awesome. And is largely because...
2. The women aren't just European. That is also awesome. The opening section on Wonderful Ancient Weirdos includes Seondeok of Silla (Korea), Khayzoun (Yemen/ Baghdada), and Subh (Basque/Cordoba), as well as Sappho and Hatshepsut and others.
3. It acknowledges some of the problems with sources, and that info about women can be hard to come at. Too true.
But. Hmm. I'm actually writing this review before I finish reading it, for two reasons. It's going to take me a long time to read because each entry is only a couple of pages long, and I find that exhausting... and I'm not sure I actually will read the whole thing. But since I got it to review, I wanted to write something about it close to publication.
The above points are absolutely reasons to buy and flick through this book. It's got a bit of swearing so it's not quite right for ten year olds, but 15 years olds? oh yes. Do it. Have it on the shelf ready to pull out to point out just a few examples of women being awesome scientists or what have you. However... like I said. Some things rub me the wrong way.
1. The introduction includes this: "Where there are mistakes, forgive me. I have done the best I can, and it turns out there is a lot of history out there which I have shoved into my eye sockets. processed through the lukewarm innards of my brain, and squeezed through my fingers. It's inevitable that some things will have gotten lost on that perilous, squidgy journey" (4). And... it really made me uncomfortable. Why is she disparaging her intelligence? Why is she blase about mistakes? By all means acknowledge there may be some, and I know she's being humourous, but this way of presenting just irked me.
2. The first chapter is "Wonderful ancient weirdos". I guess she was going for alliteration but these are powerful women she's discussing, and she's calling them weirdos? That's sending the wrong message, in my book.
3. Also on this chapter: ancient? Uh, no. Hatshepsut, sure. Sappho, yes. But Margery Kempe, Hildegard von Bingen, and the others are all medieval, or at best early medieval. These terms matter, for me, because the context is important. Everything before the Industrial Revolution is not ancient.
4. I don't love the language. No, this isn't a tone argument. This is definitely the most idisyncratic complaint, and your mileage may well vary. For instance, Hildegard's regime described thus: "The strict regime of the convent demanded that each day the nuns have... eight hours of manual labour, which entailed, I dunno, putting up retaining walls and stuff" (26). That's irksome for me.
5. Verging on not caring about historical accuracy: "This is my book, and everyone gets laid" (10), on whether Hatshepsut and her chief advisor were lovers. Just nooo.
6. Historical accuracy again: I skipped to the chapter on Alexandra Kollontai, and I can't tell you how pleased I am that she got a chapter! but it says that International Women's Day was February 7th by the Russian calendar, in 1917... but it was Feb 23. That's just careless. Also? "Sorry, New Zealand, I know you gave women [the right to vote] in 1893, but you're just so little and far away" (376). Far away from whom? Are only Americans going to read this?
7. The end of Seondeok's chapter: "Ugh, men" (18).
8. Also, they're not arranged in chronological order, within their thematic chapters, and that drives me batty.
9. Also not in order, this time alphabetical, is the Old People Glossary, which in itself (despite my comments on the language) is quote amusing. I'm fine with using modern slang in these sorts of biographies; I think it can make them much more approachable. But why, why would you not put the words in alphabetical order??
So... there you go. Decide for yourself how annoying these issues are vs having a handy reference to Kollontai and Rosa Luxembourg, Mergery Kempe and Sappho, Queen Nanny of the Maroons and Sojourner Truth, Hypatia and Nana Asma'u and 92 other women on the shelf.
September 15, 2019
Trigger warnings: murder, rape, homophobia, misogyny, sexual assault, slavery, war, genocide, racism, violence, and basically anything else you can think of.
I picked this up because a student described it as "like history class with [colleague] but EVEN FUNNIER" and obviously I had to pick it up after a review like that. And it definitely lived up to the hype.
Jewell's writing is incredibly sarcastic and I loved every second of it. It's smart and funny as hell, even when it's telling really difficult and sad stories. It's full of women you've never heard of who did amazing things and deserve more fame than they have. And because I'm a nerd, I went through and counted and over two-thirds of the women represented in this book are diverse. There are women of colour, LGBTQIA+ women (including transwomen), Indigenous women, disabled women, Jewish women, Muslim women and all kinds of intersections between them.
The stories span 1500BCE to the 1970s and everything in between. There are dozens of stories that I'd love to see made into documentaries or movies because they were so engrossing.
Basically? This lived up to the hype and I had a blast reading it.
I picked this up because a student described it as "like history class with [colleague] but EVEN FUNNIER" and obviously I had to pick it up after a review like that. And it definitely lived up to the hype.
Jewell's writing is incredibly sarcastic and I loved every second of it. It's smart and funny as hell, even when it's telling really difficult and sad stories. It's full of women you've never heard of who did amazing things and deserve more fame than they have. And because I'm a nerd, I went through and counted and over two-thirds of the women represented in this book are diverse. There are women of colour, LGBTQIA+ women (including transwomen), Indigenous women, disabled women, Jewish women, Muslim women and all kinds of intersections between them.
The stories span 1500BCE to the 1970s and everything in between. There are dozens of stories that I'd love to see made into documentaries or movies because they were so engrossing.
Basically? This lived up to the hype and I had a blast reading it.
April 30, 2019
I feel like this was a good idea that just wasn't well executed. There were too many women that I basically can't remember any of them, even after having just finished the book.
And some of the women only had like two pages dedicated to them! It felt like the author had just skimmed their Wikipedia pages and then called it a day on her research.
Also the author's "stand up comedy-esque" writing style made it seem like she was making a joke of these women and their accomplishments, rather than celebrating them.
If this had been a "serious" book focussing on 5-10 women, I think it would have been much better.
And some of the women only had like two pages dedicated to them! It felt like the author had just skimmed their Wikipedia pages and then called it a day on her research.
Also the author's "stand up comedy-esque" writing style made it seem like she was making a joke of these women and their accomplishments, rather than celebrating them.
If this had been a "serious" book focussing on 5-10 women, I think it would have been much better.
October 2, 2018
I absolutely loved this. In this, the centenary of the first of the votes for women and a big reminder of the suffragette movement I'm really enjoying books about empowering women of the past and this is up there as a great one.
100 short stories covering women of different eras and cultures, it's a great mix of history and social knowledge. I loved the tone and feel of the book and I learnt new things. Fantastic and I would recommend.
100 short stories covering women of different eras and cultures, it's a great mix of history and social knowledge. I loved the tone and feel of the book and I learnt new things. Fantastic and I would recommend.
September 27, 2020
Written in a fairly facetious and irreverent style, laugh out loud funny in some places and missing the mark in others, nevertheless featuring some amazing women of history whose stories definitely need to be told.
Go the Sisterhood!
3.5 stars
Go the Sisterhood!
3.5 stars
March 1, 2018
As someone who reads a fair bit of non-fiction, I know that it can be pretty hard to present your facts in a way that's engaging rather than dry and uninteresting. Even I struggle trying to get my family to listen to a historical fact that I find interesting, and have to resort to all kinds of colloquialisms and modern allusions to even get them to listen. Jewell's writing? It's exactly the same way that I explain things to my family.
It's a fun way of exploring history, and a great way to learn (mostly) true facts about some amazing women throughout history. There's a tonne of incredible women who did astounding things that sadly don't make it into the well-known sections of history books. Empress Wu, Hedy Lamarr, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Queen Nanny of the Maroons, Julie D'Aubigny and Constance Markievicz are just a few of my new favourite women, and there's a whole lot more that I could have mentioned. Jewell not only looks at women from across history up to the 20th century (with a couple who passed away at the beginning of the 21st), she also makes sure to avoid the tendency to white-wash history - even calling attention to the unfortunate habit - and there's a hugely diverse cast that feature throughout the book.
But it's also guaranteed to bring out your feminist side and get you angry. History has its shitty side, being heavily dominated by men, and Jewell doesn't hesitate to throw in a number of snide comments directed against the patriarchy that are designed exactly to rile up her readers. That being said though, 100 Nasty Women of History is still a very fun way to learn about an incredible number of badass women who deserve to be remembered for their deeds and exploits rather than being consigned to the dust of history.
It's a fun way of exploring history, and a great way to learn (mostly) true facts about some amazing women throughout history. There's a tonne of incredible women who did astounding things that sadly don't make it into the well-known sections of history books. Empress Wu, Hedy Lamarr, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Queen Nanny of the Maroons, Julie D'Aubigny and Constance Markievicz are just a few of my new favourite women, and there's a whole lot more that I could have mentioned. Jewell not only looks at women from across history up to the 20th century (with a couple who passed away at the beginning of the 21st), she also makes sure to avoid the tendency to white-wash history - even calling attention to the unfortunate habit - and there's a hugely diverse cast that feature throughout the book.
But it's also guaranteed to bring out your feminist side and get you angry. History has its shitty side, being heavily dominated by men, and Jewell doesn't hesitate to throw in a number of snide comments directed against the patriarchy that are designed exactly to rile up her readers. That being said though, 100 Nasty Women of History is still a very fun way to learn about an incredible number of badass women who deserve to be remembered for their deeds and exploits rather than being consigned to the dust of history.
January 17, 2021
This book was fine, but like many books that try to be hip and edgy in how they talk about history, it's going to be dated very soon.
I like the idea of telling the story of 100 women from history who are lesser-known and did great things. Jewell chose a fairly diverse cast of ladies, all of whom had very interesting stories.
However, Jewell chose to write this book in a very quirky manner than got tiring. Lots of current slang, lots of pop culture references and lots of things that will probably not mean anything to a reader 10 years from now. I understand that for years and years, history books ignored men's wives and many important women were reduced to a line or two in their husband's story, but Jewell takes this a bit too far in the other direction and just kinda repeatedly slams men in this book, when it probably wasn't always necessary.
Anyway, it was still an ok read. If you're looking to start learning more about history and don't have a ton of background, this is a good place to start, and at times Jewell was quite funny. However, I found that she sometimes passed the line between funny and obnoxious, which was my biggest problem with this book.
I like the idea of telling the story of 100 women from history who are lesser-known and did great things. Jewell chose a fairly diverse cast of ladies, all of whom had very interesting stories.
However, Jewell chose to write this book in a very quirky manner than got tiring. Lots of current slang, lots of pop culture references and lots of things that will probably not mean anything to a reader 10 years from now. I understand that for years and years, history books ignored men's wives and many important women were reduced to a line or two in their husband's story, but Jewell takes this a bit too far in the other direction and just kinda repeatedly slams men in this book, when it probably wasn't always necessary.
Anyway, it was still an ok read. If you're looking to start learning more about history and don't have a ton of background, this is a good place to start, and at times Jewell was quite funny. However, I found that she sometimes passed the line between funny and obnoxious, which was my biggest problem with this book.
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