Review: Sea Queens by Jane Yolen

by Carol2 Comments
(Suggested reading level: Grades 4-6) Loved this book! I read it with Amber (11) and it's really great. It's about strong women, okay granted they're killers and thieves, but still you have to admire them. Women who succeeded in a man's world, which you have to admit sailing in general and piracy particularly is. Still, whether the pirates came from the lower classes or the upper, whether they did their pirating on the rivers or the high seas, and under whatever flag they flew, this much is true: they were all thieves and  they often committed horrible deeds. They pillaged and murdered and sank many ships. Even the women. Especially the women. (pg. 3) Yolen introduces us to thirteen of theses infamous women, starting with Artemisia, an Admrial-Queen in Persian in 500 BC. Some of these women I was familiar with, like Grania O'Malley, Anne Bonney and Mary Read, but most I had never heard of. They were tough women, and Yolen does not paint...
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Giveaway of The War Lovers by Evan Thomas

by Carol27 Comments
The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898 by Evan Thomas Here's the blurb: On February 15, 1898, the USS Maine exploded in the Havana Harbor. Although there was no evidence that the Spanish were responsible, yellow newspapers such as William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal whipped Americans into frenzy by claiming that Spain's "secret infernal machine" had destroyed the battleship. Soon after, the blandly handsome and easily influenced President McKinley declared war, sending troops not only to Cuba but also to the Philippines, Spain's sprawling colony on the other side of the world. As Evan Thomas reveals in his rip-roaring history of those times, the hunger for war had begun years earlier. Depressed by the "closing" of the Western frontier and embracing theories of social Darwinism, a group of warmongers that included a young Teddy Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge agitated loudly and incessantly that the United...
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