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A review by loxeletters
Who Cooked the Last Supper?: The Women's History of the World by Rosalind Miles
dark
informative
inspiring
2.75
Very mixed feelings.
On the one hand, this book valiantly attempts a noble endeavour: re-framing and retelling the history of the world, focusing on women. This intention alone is noteworthy. And it arguably does an okay job, for the most part.
On the other hand, it also sets itself up for failure immediately. As a kind of feminist popsci book, it was never going to cover "The Women's History of the World", as its subtitle (and main title of the 1st edition) proclaims. Indeed, the further we move towards modernity (the book is structured in semi-chronoligal, semi-topical chapters), the less we learn about women across the world, as the book instead focuses more and more on English and US American women. Thus, the chapter about revolutions discusses solely the experience of women in the US, England, and France. Most egregiously, the chapter on imperialism spends barely five full pages on the experiences of colonised women, instead devoting itself to underscoring the importance of white women to the success of empire. Reading about their plight of living in strange, hot climates was bizarre, to say the least. Again, the British and US empires are the main focus.
This is my main gripe with the book. Some others include the aforementioned structure, which failed to convey a clear timeline or progression of how "women's history of the world" unfolded, at times jumping back and forth between times and places. Of course, history isn't always clear and linear, but it is the job of historiography to clear up the muddle and draw connections. The argumentative structure within chapters was sometimes similarly confusing.
There has been some criticism of this book regarding sourcing, especially Miles' uncommon/unsupported interpretations of sources. Without the time to review every single source used - and there are a lot! - I inevitably struggled to trust almost anything that the author was saying. Coming out of this book, I feel as though I've learned quite some stuff, but at the same time many of Miles' points could be without any scientific backup and I wouldn't know it. This is why I can't comfortably praise the book for teaching me a lot.
Finally, and this is the most nitpicky of all, I felt at times the inclusion of long quotes by male white authors where I'm sure a women's quote could've been found was disappointing. The book ending on a quote by a man... Really?
And speaking of endings, I would've wished for a separate conclusion that could've tied some points together and maybe cleared up some of the muddled structure of the book.
On the one hand, this book valiantly attempts a noble endeavour: re-framing and retelling the history of the world, focusing on women. This intention alone is noteworthy. And it arguably does an okay job, for the most part.
On the other hand, it also sets itself up for failure immediately. As a kind of feminist popsci book, it was never going to cover "The Women's History of the World", as its subtitle (and main title of the 1st edition) proclaims. Indeed, the further we move towards modernity (the book is structured in semi-chronoligal, semi-topical chapters), the less we learn about women across the world, as the book instead focuses more and more on English and US American women. Thus, the chapter about revolutions discusses solely the experience of women in the US, England, and France. Most egregiously, the chapter on imperialism spends barely five full pages on the experiences of colonised women, instead devoting itself to underscoring the importance of white women to the success of empire. Reading about their plight of living in strange, hot climates was bizarre, to say the least. Again, the British and US empires are the main focus.
This is my main gripe with the book. Some others include the aforementioned structure, which failed to convey a clear timeline or progression of how "women's history of the world" unfolded, at times jumping back and forth between times and places. Of course, history isn't always clear and linear, but it is the job of historiography to clear up the muddle and draw connections. The argumentative structure within chapters was sometimes similarly confusing.
There has been some criticism of this book regarding sourcing, especially Miles' uncommon/unsupported interpretations of sources. Without the time to review every single source used - and there are a lot! - I inevitably struggled to trust almost anything that the author was saying. Coming out of this book, I feel as though I've learned quite some stuff, but at the same time many of Miles' points could be without any scientific backup and I wouldn't know it. This is why I can't comfortably praise the book for teaching me a lot.
Finally, and this is the most nitpicky of all, I felt at times the inclusion of long quotes by male white authors where I'm sure a women's quote could've been found was disappointing. The book ending on a quote by a man... Really?
And speaking of endings, I would've wished for a separate conclusion that could've tied some points together and maybe cleared up some of the muddled structure of the book.