Reviews of Amazons to Fighter Pilots

Reina Pennington">

Amazons to Fighter Pilots: A Biographical Dictionary of Military Women
Greenwood Publishing Group 2003
Hardcover
848 pages
List Price: $175.00

Booklist Editors’ Choice 2003

REVIEWS:

“This peerless work, situated at the nexus of military history and women's studies, is an essential companion to more male-biased biographical resources like Harper Encyclopedia of Military Biography. Highly recommended. All collections. (Choice October 2003)

“The body of the work, written by more than 100 university and college-affiliated subject experts, consists of alphabetically arranged profiles of more than 300 women or groups (e.g., Spanish Civil War, women in; WASP [Women’s Airforce Service Pilots])....Presented in brisk, readable prose, entries run between a third of a page to six pages for more prominent figures or groups, such as Elizabeth I of England or the women involved in the Israeli War of Independence....Additional information such as quotations, statistics, and related facts appear in sidebars throughout the text....The first volume opens with an engagingly written introductory essay, and the second includes both a 125-page time line and bibliographic surveys of materials on “Women as Prisoners of War” and “Women, Medicine, and the Military.” Each volume contains lists of entries by geographic region, time period and conflict, role or branch of service, prisoner or POW status, and groups and organizations. The second volume closes with a comprehensive bibliography, good index, and notes on the contributors.” (Booklist, 2003)

“This beautifully illustrated two-volume work may be the most important encyclopedia ever written in the field of women and war....when future historians discern the point at which the study of women and war reached a critical mass, they may conclude that the publication of Amazons to Fighter Pilots marks the dividing point between an era when military women were ignored as irrelevant and one in which historians can no longer ignore their contributions....a must for all university libraries and serious researchers in the field of women and war. It will be an invaluable resource for decades to come.” (Lance Janda, Cameron University, The Journal of Military History, January 2004)

“In her preface and introduction, she examines the reasons for historians' neglect of the role of women in war, while showing that biographers and memoirists have not always done so. Acknowledging that these two volumes are not comprehensive, she nonetheless argues that they substantiate the proposition that women have had a role in the military and, in particular, combat, throughout history . . . This is an extraordinarily valuable contribution to military history and to the literature of intelligence.” (Hayden Peake, Central Intelligence Agency review) read the full review (scroll down)