
Bloody Brilliant Women
The Pioneers, Revolutionaries and Geniuses Your History Teacher Forgot to Mention
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $26.13
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Cathy Newman
-
By:
-
Cathy Newman
About this listen
A fresh, opinionated history of all the brilliant women you should have learned about in school but didn’t.
For hundreds of years we have heard about the great men of history, but what about herstory?
In this freewheeling history of modern Britain, Cathy Newman writes about the pioneering women who defied the odds to make careers for themselves and alter the course of modern history; women who achieved what they achieved while dismantling hostile, entrenched views about their place in society. Their role in transforming Britain is fundamental, far greater than has generally been acknowledged, and not just in the arts or education but in fields like medicine, politics, law, engineering and the military.
While a few of the women in this book are now household names, many have faded into oblivion, their personal and collective achievements mere footnotes in history. We know of Emmeline Pankhurst, Vera Brittain, Marie Stopes and Beatrice Webb. But who remembers engineer and motorbike racer Beatrice Shilling, whose ingenious device for the Spitfires’ Rolls-Royce Merlin fixed an often-fatal flaw, allowing the RAF’s planes to beat the German in the Battle of Britain? Or Dorothy Lawrence, the journalist who achieved her ambition to become a WW1 correspondent by pretending to be a man? And developmental biologist Anne McLaren, whose work in genetics paved the way for in vitro fertilisation?
Blending meticulous research with information gleaned from memoirs, diaries, letters, novels and other secondary sources, Bloody Brilliant Women uses the stories of some extraordinary lives to tell the tale of 20th and 21st century Britain. It is a history for women and men. A history for our times.
©2018 Cathy Newman (P)2018 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
-
Trick Mirror
- Reflections on Self-Delusion
- By: Jia Tolentino
- Narrated by: Jia Tolentino
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time. Now, in this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, she delves into the forces that warp our vision, demonstrating an unparalleled stylistic potency and critical dexterity.
-
-
Couldn’t stop listening
- By Alice on 08-25-19
By: Jia Tolentino
-
Necessary Trouble
- Growing Up at Midcentury
- By: Drew Gilpin Faust
- Narrated by: Drew Gilpin Faust
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To grow up in the 1950s was to enter a world of polarized national alliances, nuclear threat, and destabilized social hierarchies. To be a privileged white girl in conservative, segregated Virginia was to be expected to adopt a willful blindness to the inequities of race and the constraints of gender. For young Drew Gilpin Faust, the acceptance of both female subordination and racial privilege proved intolerable and galvanizing. Urged to become “well adjusted" and to fill the role of a poised young lady that her upbringing imposed, she found resistance was the necessary price of survival.
-
-
My Life written by Her.
- By Jacqueline L Larner on 09-03-23
-
The End of Woman
- How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us
- By: Carrie Gress
- Narrated by: Monroe Jillian
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fellow at Ethic & Public Policy Center, scholar at The Institute for Human Ecology at CUA and the nationally best-selling author of the Theology of Home series, Carrie Gress argues that fifty years of radical feminism have had the opposite of the intended effect and have granted primacy of place to the traditionally male sphere of life, while simultaneously devaluing the typical attributes, virtues, and strengths of women.
-
-
A dark look into the religious right’s hatred of women
- By Shevaun Bastarache on 10-30-23
By: Carrie Gress
-
The Feminine Mystique
- By: Betty Friedan
- Narrated by: Parker Posey
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The book that changed the consciousness of a country - and the world. Landmark, groundbreaking, classic - these adjectives barely describe the earthshaking and long-lasting effects of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This is the book that defined "the problem that has no name", that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and has been awakening women and men with its insights into social relations, which still remain fresh, ever since.
-
-
A landmark book of its time and relevant now
- By Anthony on 01-23-15
By: Betty Friedan
-
The Book of Gutsy Women
- By: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chelsea Clinton
- Narrated by: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chelsea Clinton
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hillary Rodham Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, share the stories of the gutsy women who have inspired them - women with the courage to stand up to the status quo, ask hard questions, and get the job done.
-
-
More encyclopedia than book
- By Fountain of Chris on 10-09-19
By: Hillary Rodham Clinton, and others
-
World of Our Fathers
- The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made
- By: Irving Howe
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 35 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, two million Jewish immigrants poured into America, leaving places like Warsaw or the Russian shtetls to pass through Ellis Island and start over in the New World. Though some moved on to Philadelphia, Chicago, and other points west, many of these new citizens settled in New York City, especially in Manhattan's teeming tenements....
-
-
Spectacular but long
- By Len on 10-31-20
By: Irving Howe
-
Trick Mirror
- Reflections on Self-Delusion
- By: Jia Tolentino
- Narrated by: Jia Tolentino
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time. Now, in this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, she delves into the forces that warp our vision, demonstrating an unparalleled stylistic potency and critical dexterity.
-
-
Couldn’t stop listening
- By Alice on 08-25-19
By: Jia Tolentino
-
Necessary Trouble
- Growing Up at Midcentury
- By: Drew Gilpin Faust
- Narrated by: Drew Gilpin Faust
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To grow up in the 1950s was to enter a world of polarized national alliances, nuclear threat, and destabilized social hierarchies. To be a privileged white girl in conservative, segregated Virginia was to be expected to adopt a willful blindness to the inequities of race and the constraints of gender. For young Drew Gilpin Faust, the acceptance of both female subordination and racial privilege proved intolerable and galvanizing. Urged to become “well adjusted" and to fill the role of a poised young lady that her upbringing imposed, she found resistance was the necessary price of survival.
-
-
My Life written by Her.
- By Jacqueline L Larner on 09-03-23
-
The End of Woman
- How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us
- By: Carrie Gress
- Narrated by: Monroe Jillian
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fellow at Ethic & Public Policy Center, scholar at The Institute for Human Ecology at CUA and the nationally best-selling author of the Theology of Home series, Carrie Gress argues that fifty years of radical feminism have had the opposite of the intended effect and have granted primacy of place to the traditionally male sphere of life, while simultaneously devaluing the typical attributes, virtues, and strengths of women.
-
-
A dark look into the religious right’s hatred of women
- By Shevaun Bastarache on 10-30-23
By: Carrie Gress
-
The Feminine Mystique
- By: Betty Friedan
- Narrated by: Parker Posey
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The book that changed the consciousness of a country - and the world. Landmark, groundbreaking, classic - these adjectives barely describe the earthshaking and long-lasting effects of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This is the book that defined "the problem that has no name", that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and has been awakening women and men with its insights into social relations, which still remain fresh, ever since.
-
-
A landmark book of its time and relevant now
- By Anthony on 01-23-15
By: Betty Friedan
-
The Book of Gutsy Women
- By: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chelsea Clinton
- Narrated by: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chelsea Clinton
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hillary Rodham Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, share the stories of the gutsy women who have inspired them - women with the courage to stand up to the status quo, ask hard questions, and get the job done.
-
-
More encyclopedia than book
- By Fountain of Chris on 10-09-19
By: Hillary Rodham Clinton, and others
-
World of Our Fathers
- The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made
- By: Irving Howe
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 35 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, two million Jewish immigrants poured into America, leaving places like Warsaw or the Russian shtetls to pass through Ellis Island and start over in the New World. Though some moved on to Philadelphia, Chicago, and other points west, many of these new citizens settled in New York City, especially in Manhattan's teeming tenements....
-
-
Spectacular but long
- By Len on 10-31-20
By: Irving Howe
-
Madame Restell
- The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist
- By: Jennifer Wright
- Narrated by: Mara Wilson
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Madame Restell is a sharp, witty Gilded Age medical history which introduces us to an iconic, yet tragically overlooked, feminist heroine: a glamorous women’s healthcare provider in Manhattan, known to the world as Madame Restell. A celebrity in her day with a flair for high fashion and public, petty beefs, Restell was a self-made woman and single mother who used her wit, her compassion, and her knowledge of family medicine to become one of the most in-demand medical workers in New York.
-
-
Every woman should listen to this book!
- By Ruth Aston on 06-18-23
By: Jennifer Wright
-
Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions
- Third Edition
- By: Gloria Steinem
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik, Gabra Zackman, Gloria Steinem, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An updated third edition of the renowned feminist’s most diverse and timeless collection of essays, with a new foreword written by Emma Watson and new material written and read by Gloria Steinem.
-
-
A Must Read (or listen) For Every Generation
- By Rachel Marsala on 05-15-20
By: Gloria Steinem
-
All the Single Ladies
- Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation
- By: Rebecca Traister
- Narrated by: Candace Thaxton, Rebecca Traister - introduction
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a provocative, groundbreaking work, National Magazine Award finalist Rebecca Traister, "the most brilliant voice on feminism in this country" (Anne Lamott), traces the history of unmarried women in America who, through social, political, and economic means, have radically shaped our nation.
-
-
Excellent book, destroyed by narration
- By Theresa Holleran on 03-06-16
By: Rebecca Traister
-
We Don't Know Ourselves
- A Personal History of Modern Ireland
- By: Fintan O'Toole
- Narrated by: Aidan Kelly
- Length: 22 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In We Don't Know Ourselves, Fintan O'Toole weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary "backwater" to an almost totally open society - perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history. O'Toole narrates the once unthinkable collapse of the all-powerful Catholic Church, brought down by scandal and by the activism of ordinary Irish. He relates the horrific violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which led most Irish to reject violent nationalism.
-
-
Relentlessly Negative
- By John on 06-02-22
By: Fintan O'Toole
-
Backlash
- The Undeclared War Against American Women
- By: Susan Faludi
- Narrated by: Maggi-Meg Reed
- Length: 23 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1991, Backlash made headlines and became a best-selling classic for its thoroughgoing debunking of a decade-long antifeminist backlash against women’s advances. As Faludi writes in a new preface for this edition, much has changed in the intervening years. This startling and essential book helps explain why women’s freedoms are still so demonized and threatened - and urges us to choose a different future.
-
-
Worthwhile, except for...
- By That Grrrl on 11-24-20
By: Susan Faludi
-
No Stopping Us Now
- The Adventures of Older Women in American History
- By: Gail Collins
- Narrated by: Gail Collins, Tanya Eby
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her lively social history of American women and aging, acclaimed New York Times columnist Gail Collins illustrates the ways in which age is an arbitrary concept that has swung back and forth over the centuries. From Plymouth Rock (when a woman was considered marriageable if "civil and under fifty years of age"), to a few generations later, when they were quietly retired to elderdom once they had passed the optimum age for reproduction, to recent decades, American attitudes towards age have been a moving target.
-
-
amazing
- By Elaine Sharon Davis on 06-09-20
By: Gail Collins
-
Whose Story Is This?
- Old Conflicts, New Chapters
- By: Rebecca Solnit
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who gets to shape the narrative of our times? The current moment is a battle royale over that foundational power, one in which women, people of color, and non-straight people are telling other versions, and white people and men (and particularly, white men) are trying to hang onto the old versions and their own centrality. In Whose Story Is This?, Rebecca Solnit appraises what's emerging, why it matters, and what the obstacles are.
By: Rebecca Solnit
-
While Time Remains
- A North Korean Girl's Search for Freedom in America
- By: Yeonmi Park
- Narrated by: Maureen Taylor
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After defecting from North Korea, Yeonmi Park found liberty and freedom in America. But she also found a chilling crackdown on self-expression and thought that reminded her of the brutal regime she risked her life to escape. When she spoke out about the mass political indoctrination she saw around her in the United States, Park faced censorship and even death threats.
-
-
This should be required reading. Amazing book
- By Amazon Customer on 02-15-23
By: Yeonmi Park
-
The Hitler Virus
- The Insidious Legacy of Adolf Hitler
- By: Peter Wyden
- Narrated by: Robin Sachs
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In spring 1945, as the Russians moved on Berlin and it became clear the Nazi cause was lost, Adolf Hitler assured his most trusted henchmen that even if he were to die, "the seed of National Socialism will grow again one day [in]…a radiant rebirth." Several times after the war, the distinguished author Peter Wyden, himself a victim of the Nazis, returned to Germany to discover, to his dismay, that Hitler's prediction was all too true. In this unsettling audiobook, Wyden documents the reality that the "Hitler virus" is still very much alive.
-
-
Well written but factually flawed
- By Catalyst on 12-25-20
By: Peter Wyden
-
JFK
- Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956
- By: Fredrik Logevall
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 29 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By the time of his assassination in 1963, John F. Kennedy stood at the helm of the greatest power the world had ever seen, a booming American nation that he had steered through some of the most perilous diplomatic standoffs of the Cold War. Born in 1917 to a striving Irish American family that had become among Boston’s wealthiest, Kennedy knew political ambition from an early age, and his meteoric rise to become the youngest elected president cemented his status as one of the most mythologized figures in American history.
-
-
Excellent Portrait of JFK & His Times
- By John David on 12-14-20
By: Fredrik Logevall
-
A History of Modern Britain
- By: Andrew Marr
- Narrated by: David Timson
- Length: 29 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A History of Modern Britain confronts head-on the victory of shopping over politics. It tells the story of how the great political visions of New Jerusalem or a second Elizabethan Age, rival idealisms, came to be defeated by a culture of consumerism, celebrity and self-gratification. In each decade political leaders think they know what they are doing but find themselves confounded. Every time the British people turn out to be stroppier and harder to herd than predicted.
-
-
Masterful in focus, pace, content, performance
- By Philo on 11-10-16
By: Andrew Marr
-
Those Who Forget
- By: Geraldine Schwarz
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During World War II, Géraldine Schwarz’s German grandparents were neither heroes nor villains; they were merely Mitlaüfer - those who followed the current. Decades later, while delving through filing cabinets in the basement of their apartment building in Mannheim, Schwarz discovers that in 1938, her grandfather took advantage of Nazi policies to buy a business from a Jewish family for a low price. Weaving together the threads of three generations of her family story with Europe’s process of post-war reckoning, Schwarz explores how millions were seduced by ideology.
-
-
Not what it purports to be
- By DPM on 10-10-20
Critic reviews
‘Newman is a riveting teller of history. We are given an insight into the lives of women from Queen Victoria to the suffragists and suffragettes fighting for franchise, political pioneers and present day female advocates of the arts … A celebration of women who helped shape modern Britain – as entertaining as it is enlightening … Newman is a brilliant writer; each chapter throws up something even more interesting than the last and the prose shifts seamlessly between them … I could read a whole second volume’ Hannah Jane Parkinson, Observer
‘Modern, punchy and fresh. A pacy compendium of fascinating nuggets’ Katie Glass, Sunday Times
‘For far too long, women’s achievements have been airbrushed out of history. In this groundbreaking book, the first of its kind, Cathy Newman has done a bloody brilliant job of painting them back in bright, vivid colours. She has repaid the debt due by all of us to women pioneers of the past and created a treasure trove of inspiration for women of today and tomorrow. I just wish this book had been written when I was growing up.’ Nicola Sturgeon
‘Powerful, poignant and often provoking – this book shines a light on the contribution of women of all ages, ethnicities, faiths and backgrounds who have helped to make our city and country so great. Cathy Newman narrates the stories of women who have helped shape the world in which we live today, by challenging gender stereotypes, smashing glass ceilings and blazing a trail for the next generation to follow. Eloquently written and hugely enjoyable to read.’ Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London
‘Brilliant, enlightening, and a powerful reminder of the extraordinary and sustained courage of the women who fought against overwhelming odds for equality of opportunity, for rights and respect. This book is so important. No library, no school or university, should be without a copy.’ Michael Morpurgo