Women Rulers: Hidden in History

Women Rulers: Hidden in History is part of Crabtree’s new series, “Hidden History”. The six books in the series are written by four different writers but have a consistent format and presentation. The books are organized into chapters by continents – Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Africa.

Each book begins with a chapter titled History’s Hidden Heroines” that gives context to the particular field of endeavors of women featured in the book and explains why we don’t know more about women’s achievements.

Men also became powerful because they had the job of recording, or writing down, history. And because men no longer believed that women should have power, they often did not write about powerful women. That is an important reason why great women rulers are often little known today.

Women Rulers includes women from a broad range of cultures and time periods with examples from ancient to modern times. Women rulers, leaders, and peacekeepers from around the world are included.

Nanyehi helped lead the Cherokee people for many years. All that time, she worked very hard to improve relationships between her tribe and the settlers. She is remembered today as a great leader who always tried to bring about peace. (p. 31)

The information in Women Rulers is presented in bite-size chunks, easily read by young researchers. The simple graphic illustrations are likely to remind students of graphic novels.

Numerous black and white and coloured reproductions of art, and historic and current photos support the text. There is a short glossary, an index, and a list of additional resources “about women who broke the rules and changed the world”.

Buy the whole series if you can and promote them with both your male and female students. Everyone deserves to have a more complete picture of history.