Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

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...

Title: Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II Author: Liza Mundy. Publication Info: Hachette Books, 2017. 432 pages (Kindle edition). Source: Library digital services Publisher’s Blurb: In the tradition of Hidden Figures and The Girls of Atomic City, Code Girls is the astonishing, untold story of the young American women who cracked key Axis codes, helping to secure Allied victory and revolutionizing the field of cryptanalysis. Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them. A strict vow of secrecy nearly erased their efforts from history; now, through dazzling research and interviews with surv...

         Note: this is the same book. The copy I read is on the left, and reflects a change of title and cover to go with the TV series made from the book. On the right is the original title and cover. Title: Jambusters [Home Fires]: The Story of the Women's Institute in the Second World War Author: Julie Summers Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2013. 368 pages. Source: Library Publisher's Summary: Away from the frontlines of World War II, in towns and villages across Great Britain, ordinary women were playing a vital role in their country’s war effort. As members of the Women’s Institute, an organization with a presence in a third of Britain’s villages, they ran canteens and knitted garments for troops, collected tons of rosehips and other herbs to replace medicines that couldn’t be imported, and advised the government on issues ranging from evacuee housing to children’s health to postwar reconstruction. But they are best known for making jam: from...