Forgotten Warriors: A History of Women on the Front Line

'Ambitious, wide-ranging and learned' Times Literary Supplement 'Vivid and extraordinary' Wall Street Journal From Boudicca to Ukraine, battlefields have always contained a surprising number of female fighters. We have all heard of Joan of Arc, but not the cross-dressing soldiers whose disguises were so effective the men around them never realized who they were fighting with. Forgotten Warriors shines a light on women in war, from the Mino,the all-female army the protected Dahomey from the West for two hundred years, to the Night Witches, Soviet flying aces that decimated the Nazis. Against a backdrop of sieges and desperate battles, rebellions and civil wars, Sarah Percy brings these extraordinary women to life, and sets the record straight. 'Vulnerability, strength and defiance . . . in exploring the history of women in combat, Forgotten Warriors tackles their exclusion from the historical record' The Spectator, Books of the Year 'Fascinating' BBC History 'Magnificent . . . could not be more timely' The Monthly 'Truly impressive and rigorously researched, this book should be in all libraries' New York Journal of Books