Lisa Bier, “Fighting the Current: The Rise of American Women’s Swimming, 1870-1926” (McFarland, 2011)
American women dominated the swimming competition at the London Olympics, earning a total of sixteen medals in seventeen events. This template of success was set already at the 1920 Games, the first O...
10 Aug 201250min
Anne Sebba, “That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor” (St. Martin’s Press, 2012)
The story of Wallis Simpson and the Duke of Windsor is more often than not presented as a great love story: she is the woman for whom the King gave up the throne. It’s precisely this oversimplificatio...
17 Juli 201241min
Sara Marcus, “Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution” (Harper Perennial, 2010)
Harkening out of the United State’s Pacific Northwest in the early 1990s, Bikini Kill and Bratmobile made a big enough splash that their names and songs are still recognized by many rock fans. And tho...
3 Juli 20121h
Elizabeth Goldsmith, “The King’s Mistresses” (PublicAffairs, 2012)
As Elizabeth Goldsmith writes in The King’s Mistresses: The Liberated Lives of Marie Mancini, Princess Colonna, and Her Sister Hortense, Duchess Mazarin (PublicAffairs, 2012), the Mazarin sisters were...
29 Juni 201243min
Nwando Achebe, “The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe” (Indiana University Press, 2011)
When I saw Nwando Achebe‘s book The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe (Indiana University Press, 2011), I thought: “Really? A female king? Cool!” It turns out Ahebi Ugbabe was not only a f...
29 Juni 20121h 13min
Timothy Grainey, “Beyond ‘Bend It Like Beckham’: The Global Phenomenon of Women’s Soccer” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012)
Two days before this year’s Champions League final between Chelsea and Bayern Munich, the top two women’s clubs in Europe played on the same pitch, at Munich’s Olympic Stadium, in the final match of t...
22 Juni 201254min
Trevor Getz and Liz Clarke, “Abina and the Important Men: A Graphic History” (Oxford UP, 2012)
Imagine this: a young African girl, barefoot but wearing a dress and head wrap, clenches her fists and looks you in the eye. Behind her a semi-circle of men, some in suits and some in kente cloth, tur...
8 Juni 20121h 16min
Sally Bedell Smith, “Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch” (Random House, 2012)
The second-longest reigning British Monarch, Queen Elizabeth II has always remained an elusive figure, a monumental accomplishment given the media attention focused upon her family. In her new book, E...
1 Juni 201242min
