Fearless: Powerful Women of History

by Zachary Hill

This is an unscholarly book about the amazing women found in history. It uses humor to examine the lives of these hard core, butt-kicking women that stood up against the Man in their own way. Some used swords and others used words, but each had courage. This book features awesome women from Joan of Arc, Empress Theodora, Hua Mulan, Tomoe Gozen and Jane Austen. This book is inspired from the website, Minimumwagehistorian.com which uses historical figures to guide us through history. Some of them are biased, some untrustworthy and others are lunatics. Each has their own slant on history and help us understand these women's stories.

Genres: History

104 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 6, 2013

Reviews

[Kelly Delzeith · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this book. I read some of the negative reviews but the subject matter and writing style appealed to me so I gave it a shot. There are inconsistencies with the dating system used throughout the book, sometimes using AD and other times CE, other times not using it at all, and not always capitalizing it, minor things I know, but seriously? I was also not a fan of the dialogue panel of other historical figures, because for the most part they were used to drop in pop culture references. The author clearly denotes that it is a non scholarly work but after reading him refer to some male figure as studly, which I haven't heard used by anyone over the age of sixteen in twelve years, I was ready to see if I could still return the book.

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this more than I did. The concept of a panal discussing or interviewing historical characters is an interesting and potentially fun idea. I love history and agree with Hill that it doesn't have to be boring. But it doesn't need to be dumbed down, modernized and exagerated to be interesting. Instrad of letting the details speak for themselves, Hill told the most shallow versions of these women's life stories possible, and tried to compensate by having quirky characters serve as panalists. It seems the author hoped that these panalists would capture attention, instead of telling the stories in a captivating way. It was a pretty big cop-out. Especially since one of these panalists lied throughout the book. How does that add to a history book?

The way some of these panalists were treated bordered on racism. None of the panalists were native English speakers in their lifetimes, but the Native American, Russian and Japanese panalists were written with steriotypical accents. If the author had done this with every panalist, it might have made sense. But why just those panalists?

There are many better books about these women. You don't need to dumb down things to make them interesting. It seems Hill didn't know that.

[Shannon Guymon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun and irreverent look at history with a crazy cast of historical characters that guide the reader through history. This book finds women that were hugely influential and stood up for themselves against all odds. Some are well known like Joan of Arc and Hua Mulan. Others are seldom mentioned in history like Anna Komemne and Tomoe Gozen. Less known, yes, but all kicked butt in their own way.

[Joyce]

This is a really fun way to read about famous and not so famous women in history. Zachary Hill makes these characters seem to live!