Elizabeth Kerri Mahon

Presents stories of famous female risk takers who defied convention and beat the odds to make history, including such women as Cleopatra, Emma Hamilton, NAACP founder Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Isadora Duncan.

The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women

Scandalous Women

Amy Grieve

Scandalous Women was a brief, yet insightful view into a mixture of well-known (and some more obscure female figures) who represented scandal during their lifetime for various reasons. Although we all know that a woman refusing to remain docile and submissive to a man or institution is still a reason to label with the ‘scandalous’ moniker. 

I wish there was more representation in this book for women of colour. They were present, but not enough for my liking. Also, I felt a lot of the women mentioned in this book were people I already knew about which made their sections a little boring, especially when a crucial detail or piece of context was missed. It made me feel like I wasn’t getting the full story about these women. 

Again, I would have loved more detail about these women. I wanted to know about their inner lives, their hopes and their passions, yet most of the time it did read like a wikipedia article giving the barebone facts. If you’re looking for something along those lines I would probably direct you towards Tori Telfer’s two books about historical women which have both a greater variety of women in regards to race and more detailed account of these women’s lives

Scandalous Women The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women

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