Amazing Women of the Civil War: Fascinating True Stories of Women Who Made a Difference Book

After reading "They Fought Like Demons", about women posing as men to become soldiers during the Civil War, this book seemed very lightweight, based on hearsay and not fact. Kind of like reading "The National Enquirer" as compared to "The New York Times". See the chapter on the Missing Women of Roswell! There is also an apparent bias in this book toward the Confederacy. In the first chapter, the author describes Union soldier Sarah Emma Edmonds' memoirs as "clearly the product of a vivid imagination". She is one of the best documented of the women soldiers, having received a pension from the US government for her service based, in part, on the testimony of her superior officers. Yet the author accepts the actions of Confederate spy Belle Boyd based solely on "tradition, supported by Boyd's memoirs". Why the difference in treatment of these two? Likewise, for a book about women there are an awful lot of discussions of and pictures of men. Nearly half the pictures in the book are of men. While it is nice to look at historical photos, I would have preferred the focus of the book to be what its title purported: women of the Civil War. Some of the statements of the author are just downright condescending. For example, a comment in the chapter about Emma Sansom: "She died wearing tattered homespun, but knowing that she was the only female ever to climb aboard the warhorse of Nathan B. Forrest and ride with him. No Southern woman who survived the war years could have imagined a more rewarding memory." Really?