Stamping Out Women Warriors–In A Good Way

In the course of doing the research for this book on women warriors, I’ve found plenty of attempts to write women warriors out of history.*  It doesn’t make me happy,** but I expected it. What I didn’t expect were the number of women warriors whose countries later embraced them as national heroines and celebrated them…

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From the Archives: The Most Successful Pirate in History

Any guesses? Edward Teach, commonly known as Blackbeard? Captain Kidd? Captain Morgan?* Grace O Malley, aka the Pirate Queen? Sir Francis Drake?** None of them are even close, though Drake has the distinction of capturing what may well have been the largest prize taken in a single raid: the Spanish galleon Cacafuego. The title goes…

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And speaking of Queens Isabella…

My last blog post was about a queen named Isabella that you probably had never heard of.* Today I thought I’d talk a bit about an Isabella who you probably think you know a lot about: Isabella of Castile. Isabella is best known to American school children–and consequently to American adults–as the woman who funded…

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