Washington Post pop-culture video host Jewell has crafted indomitable coverage of historical women everyone should know. In this collection of minibiographies, she introduces dozens of female-identifying revolutionaries, dissidents, geniuses, muckrakers, and conquerors. Her subjects span thousands of years, from Queen Zenobia of third-century-BCE Syria to Nana Asma'u of eighteenth-century Nigeria to Josephine Baker. Jewell narrates the lives of these women with a righteous comic and conversational tone, and her enthusiasm is contagious. The women chosen are organized into larger chapters, some thematically light (women who knew how to party, women who unabashedly wore pants) while some tackle heavier topics (women who punched Nazis, literally and metaphorically). Though she refuses to name him beyond the introduction, Jewell's work is in clear response to the election of Donald Trump. Still, her intentions with this book are clear and optimistic. Her hope that the women she studied become commonplace names infuses every paragraph. Galvanizing and laugh-out-loud funny, this book is a riot on par with the women it presents.--Eathorne, Courtney Copyright 2018 Booklist

Jewell (pop culture video team, Washington Post) offers a cheeky collection of 100 minibiographies of inspiring women who are, for the most part, completely absent from history books. Spanning thousands of years, Jewell's vignettes introduce impressive political leaders, scientists, writers and poets, and spies and revolutionaries, loosely grouped by theme (women who were geniuses; women who fought empires and racists; women who wore trousers and enjoyed terrifying hobbies). From the fearsome and very successful Chinese pirate Ching Shih ("She f**cked up that glass ceiling that had been holding lady pirates back too long") to the great Egyptian mathematician and astronomer Hypathia ("sadly no one ever informed her that actually girls are really bad at math because their brains are too frilly and emotional"), listeners will laugh out loud at the pithy descriptions of extraordinary women in a wide variety of fields and, perhaps, be inspired to seek out more information about them. Narrator Rachael Beresford has a lovely, lilting voice that some listeners may find to be a bit of a mismatch to the irreverent, and often quite raunchy, tone of Jewell's writing. VERDICT This inspiring and hilarious title should find a home in most biography collections, with the caveat that some listeners could object to the coarse language; the print version, with its colorful, fun layout, could be a better choice for some libraries. ["The book is written in a fun, irreverent, and easy-to-read style. The vignettes will serve to pique interest and motivate readers to attempt to learn more about these amazing women": LJ 2/15/18 review of the Sourcebooks pap.]-Beth -Farrell, -Cleveland State Univ. Law Lib. © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.