Laura Browder

When Janey Comes Marching Home contains forty-eight self-posed photographs by Sascha Pflaeging with oral histories collected by Laura Browder to provide a dramatic portrait of women at war. Women from all five branches of the military share their stories- stories that are by turns moving, comic, thought provoking, and profound. These stories tell us not just what it's like to be under fire, but also how women deployed cope with motherhood, marriage, sexism, sacrifice, and duty. By coming face-to-face with women veterans, those who are outside that world can begin to get a sense of how the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have shaped their lives and how their stories may ripple out and influence the experience of all American women.… (more)

I picked up Laura Browder's book at my library on a whim. I'm not a proponent of guns yet the premise of her book intrigued me - as did the included photographs. Browder's writing is lean without being sparse and the book itself only totals 287 pages so it makes for a quick read. Bowder cites all her sources and includes an expansive index for the reader. If you're looking for a comprehensive anthology of all notable female gun proponents in US history, this is not your book. I'm not sure if such a book even exists. However Browder creates a wonderful snapshot of the public perception of women and guns starting in the mid 1800's onwards through the 1999's. I found her book fascinating and a quick read - partly due to her subject matter and partly to her writing style.… (more)

Deals more with the sociological reasons and results of ethnic impersonator autobiographies than the personal ones. She suggests that Asa Carter gave up his Klansman identity and its black/white binary world view by choosing a third ethnicity---American Indian. Also, he could no longer earn a living as a white supremacy speechwriter. She touches on the fact that readers want these autobiographies / novels to be true and some of them end up in history books. The author uses the word "essential" in a way that I, an interested outsider to the world of academic cultural studies, am not familiar with.… (more)