Smarty Pants From The American Scholar

Women in wars on land and sea, whether queens or foot soldiers, rarely get their due—yet their lives are at least as interesting as their male counterparts’, not least because they had to leap through so many hoops to fight. Historian Pamela Toler wants us to know their names, and her new book, Women Warriors, is a global history covering everyone from the Trung sisters, who led an untrained, 80,000-strong Vietnamese army against the Chinese Empire, to Cheyenne warriors like Buffalo Calf Road Woman, who knocked General Custer off his horse. There are at least a hundred killer screenplay ideas lurking in the history books—if only we bothered to look.Go beyond the episode:Pamela D. Toler’s Women Warriors: An Unexpected HistoryRead an excerpt about the Russian First Women’s Battalion of DeathLearn about the lady pirates time forgot, including one who gave birth in the middle of a sea battle (and still won) and Cheng I Sao, who negotiated a sweet retirement package with the Chinese government when the Navy c