Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

I picked this book up at the library because my brother was reading it (we both sometimes share Mom's account for ebooks, so we see what everyone's reading--sometimes it's fun to guess who's reading what) and it looked interesting. I wasn't wrong.   Title :  And If I Perish: Frontline U.S. Army Nurses in World War II 
 Auth or: Evelyn M. Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee 
Publication Info : e-book 2007 Anchor (Original hardback 2003 by Knopf, 514 pages). 
 Source : Library   

Publisher’s Blurb (from Amazon) :  In World War II, 59,000 women voluntarily risked their lives for their country as U.S. Army nurses. When the war began, some of them had so little idea of what to expect that they packed party dresses; but the reality of service quickly caught up with them, whether they waded through the water in the historic landings on North African and Normandy beaches, or worked around the clock in hospital tents on the Italian front as bombs fell all around the...

Non-fiction biography cover reveal, courtesy of Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours! Marie Conner, A Leading Lady: Her Life and Civic Leadership in a Bygone Era by Elle Mott About Marie Conner, A Leading Lady Marie was born a girl. That was only her first mistake, according to her father.       In an era when daughters and wives are not supposed to be concerned with matters outside the home, Marie is determined to prove him wrong. To do this, she must break down barriers placed on women in society, overcome difficulties that befall her, surpass hardships from the Great Depression, and then face an inevitable relocation.       Marie steps into her community and into the hearts of many people to give her time and help with their needs. She wants nothing in return other than her father’s acceptance as a worthy woman and yet, she gains much in return, even if it is not her father’s praise. This is Marie’s story—of a rise from her girlhood angst...

I'm doing mini-reviews here of a couple of books I read recently about women explorers. I picked up an actual paper copy of  Off the Beaten Track  last fall when I was visiting Banff National Park.  A Woman in the Polar Night  was a library book, one of those that pops up in the "if you're looking at this book, you might like these books" lists.   Title: A woman in the Polar Night Author: Christiane Ritter. Translate by Jane Degras, read by Rebecca Gallagher Publication Info: Tantor Media, 2024. 7 hours. First published in German in 1938. Source: Library Publisher's Blurb (Goodreads): This rediscovered classic memoir tells the incredible tale of a woman defying society's expectations to find freedom and peace in the adventure of a lifetime. In 1934, the painter Christiane Ritter leaves her comfortable life in Austria and travels to the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen, to spend a year there with her husband. She thinks it will be a relaxing trip, a c...

Before I get to my review, I need to report that reality has struck and I've shifted my launch date back to August 25. With luck, I can actually get all the parts together by then! Why does every book take at least a long as the last? You'd think I'd get the system down and be faster at this!   Now, on to today's feature: a great book I got for Xmas, about the first botanists to run the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, collecting botanical samples all the way!   Title : Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon Author: Melissa L. Sevigny  Publication Info: WW Norton, 2023. 290 pages in paperback. Source: Xmas gift  Publisher's Blurb: In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off down the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious expedition leader and three amateur boatmen. With its churning rapids, sheer cliffs, and boat-shattering boulders, the Colorado was famed as the mo...

I'm heading to Iceland later this year, so my reading has begun to include books of Icelandic history and legends, as well as guide books. This book caught my eye because it is the story of a remarkable woman, and also tells us a lot about the culture of the time.  Title: Woman, Captain, Rebel: The Extraordinary True Story of a Daring Icelandic Sea Captain Author: Margaret Willson Publication Info: Sourcebooks, 2023, 420 pages Source: Library Publisher's Blurb: A notorious crime, a lone woman fighting for equality, and the thrills of the wide-open sea A daring and magnificent account of Iceland's most famous female sea captain who constantly fought for women's rights and equality—and who also solved one of the country's most notorious robberies. Many people may have heard the old sailing superstition that having women onboard a ship was bad luck. Thus, the sea remains in popular knowledge a male realm. When we think of examples of daring sea captains, swa...

Title: We Also Served: The Forgotten Women of the First World War Author: Vivien Newman Publication Info: Pen and Sword Books, 2014. 224 pages Source: Library digital resources Publisher's Blurb: We Also Served is a social history of women s involvement in the First World War. Dr Vivien Newman disturbs myths and preconceptions surrounding women's war work and seeks to inform contemporary readers of countless acts of derring-do, determination, and quiet heroism by British women, that went on behind the scenes from 1914-1918. In August 1914 a mere 640 women had a clearly defined wartime role. Ignoring early War Office advice to 'go home and sit still', by 1918 hundreds of thousands of women from all corners of the world had lent their individual wills and collective strength to the Allied cause. As well as becoming nurses, munitions workers, and members of the Land Army, women were also ambulance drivers and surgeons; they served with the Armed Forces; funded a...

This isn't really a proper review post, because my mind just doesn't seem to be working that way. But I've recently finished a couple of works of non-fiction, one audio, one on the Kindle, and at least have a few thoughts.  First, the books. Both were fairly random selections from the library's Overdrive collection, nabbed in something of a hurry for my road trips. As a result, the print book was read in snatches, the audio book with whatever attention was left after driving. In general, for me the mark of a good work of history is that it makes me care about something I may not have known I was interested in. Both of these books managed that. In print we have:          Title: Spearhead: An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy, and a Collision of Lives in World War II Author: Adam Makos Publication info: Ballantine Books, 2019. 395 pages   From the author of the international bestseller A Higher Call comes the riveting World War II story of an ...

Title:  A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II Author: Sonia Purnell Publication Info: Viking Press, 2019. 368 pages. Source: Library digital resources Publisher's Blurb: In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her." The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and--despite her prosthetic leg--helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it. Virginia established vast spy networks throughout France, called weapons and explosives down from the skies, and became a linchpin for the Resistance. Even as her face covered wanted posters and a bounty ...

  Title: Women Heroes of World War I: 16 Remarkable Resisters, Soldiers, Spies, and Medics Author: Katheryn J. Atwood Publication Info: Chicago Review Press, 2014. 256 pages (hardcover) Source: Library digital resources Publisher’s Blurb: In time for the 2014 centennial of the start of the Great War, this book brings to life the brave and often surprising exploits of 16 fascinating women from around the world who served their countries at a time when most of them didn’t even have the right to vote. Readers meet 17-year-old Frenchwoman Emilienne Moreau, who assisted the Allies as a guide and set up a first-aid post in her home to attend to the wounded; Russian peasant Maria Bochkareva, who joined the Imperial Russian Army by securing the personal permission of Tsar Nicholas II, was twice wounded in battle and decorated for bravery, and created and led the all-women combat unit the “Women’s Battalion of Death” on the Eastern Front; and American journalist Madeleine Zabrisk...

It's happened again! Lost track of the days of the week, but there is a review for you today, and my clock says it's still Monday :) Title: The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars Author: Dava Sobel Publication Info: Viking, 2016, 336 pages Source: Library Digital Resources   Publisher's Blurb: In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or “human computers,” to interpret the observations made via telescope by their male counterparts each night. At the outset this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of the resident astronomers, but by the 1880s the female corps included graduates of the new women's colleges—Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates. The “glass universe” of half a million plates that Harvard am...