Women Warriors: A History Book

READ UNTIL YOU'RE CONVINCED, THEN SET ASIDE

Anthropologist Jones might have benefited from a bit more ambition in planning the scope of this project. From page one, he's on a mission to convince and makes an unqualified success of it. Throughout recorded history, women have successfully fought and defeated their male counterparts in battle.
The historical and anecdotal evidence is overwhelming. We're talking hand to hand combat - women win. We're talking riding at the forefront of the calvary charge - women win. We're talking all-female armies - victorious. You name it, women can and have repeatedly gone to war and succeeded as well or better than men.
Even today, the tradition continues - although less commonly in westernized societies. In the west, we experience a different kind of war - the household war. Yes, the battle of the sexes continues without abatement. Women are natural guerilla fighters, and when the outlet of real combat is closed off, the silent war is ready and able to fill the void.
Reviewer tongue-in-cheek bias aside, with the case made so early, why the hundred extra pages of detail? For anyone not vitally interested in amassing a thousand cases to cite as evidence in support of women as pure warriors, this work overwhelms with minutia. Writing is about making choices but here, the author doesn't seem to know how. Long after irrefutable evidence is amply presented, the droning continues. Names, names, names, and too-thin sketches of events. At this point, an unspoken question screams to be answered: fine, so that's the way it is, but what happened? What changed society? How did women fade from glorious contributors worthy of male respect to become dainty objects who knew only how to say, "no" and, "I can't"?
Here is the failure in scope mentioned earlier. To the extent that the author does not apply himself to suggesting answers to the questions he raises, and that these, to this reader at least, are critical to the fulfillment of our new understanding, Women Warriors succeeds, but falls short of being memorable.
Art Tirrell is the author of "The Secret Ever Keeps", a novel in which a strong female protagonist has to face her fears and prove herself on and under the dangerous waters of Lake Ontario.