Having recently suffered through one and a half other books that promised to teach me about interesting women I've never heard of but which were, in reality, 60% Tumblr level "lol men are the worst am I right?" kind of jokes, 20% obnoxious pop culture references, 10 % insinuating that literally nothing has changed since the 19th century and women are just as oppressed as ever thanks to Trump obviously, and maybe 10% relevant information, I was excited for Women Who Dared because I really, really love to read about groundbreaking, trailblazing, amazing historical women, and just once I would like to be able to do so without straining my eye muscles from rolling them too hard.
Unfortunately, this book is also not the answer I was looking for, but this time it's harder to put into words why. Certainly it was not too political, which I appreciated, but it had numerous other problems. I couldn't entirely get behind the writing style, for one thing. Colloquial in certain places, pretentious in others, it was as if the author couldn't decide whether he wanted to write a serious, informative non-fiction book, or a gossip column-worthy, flippant account of the lives of these women, full of rumours told as facts, possibilites presented as certanties, and blatant misinformation.
And oh, these women. I can't for the life of me understand what possessed the author to choose these six women in particular for his book. Certainly they all fit under the "women who dared" title, and it's probably my fault that I expected to find actual role models in here instead of con artists, barely important socialites, and women whose only claim to fame is their messy divorce and all the men they fucked. And just to show that I'm not kidding or exaggerating about any of this, let's take a look at the book chapter by chapter.
