Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2025 -

Wiesner-Hanks (emer., Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), the leading scholar of the history of gender in the early modern world, has published 30 books. She is also editor in chief of the seven-volume The Cambridge World History (2015). In this book, she places "women at the center of the story of the Reformations and the spread of Christianity around the world" (p. 299). In this context, women were monarchs who ruled as effectively and thoughtfully as any man. As mothers, both actual and spiritual, they advocated their faith against religious opponents and within their spiritual communities. As persecuted refugees, such as Jewish conversas, they reknitted their communities of faith in distant lands. Female migrants of choice traversed oceans and built new religious homes. Women suffered martyrdom bravely steeled by faith or experienced and shared mystical visions, inspiring both devotion and persecution. In Asia, Africa, and the Americas, female missionaries nurtured female converts, who themselves became missionaries. Wiesner-Hanks introduces readers to over 240 women's lives and, wherever possible, quotes their thoughts and beliefs from extant documents. Finally, she connects their histories with their global legacies as canonized saints or commemorated heroines. Plates, illustrations, maps, endnotes, and lists of further readings round out the text.Summing Up: Essential. General readers through faculty.