While Katherine Halligan's Herstory: 50 Women and Girls Who Shook Up Their World has indeed been interesting and enlightening to a certain extent, frankly, for at least some of the women and girls featured and presented, the author's printed words have been been what can only be called entirely too positive and almost saccharinely laudatory, often making light of if not actually totally ignoring the less than stellar (and sometimes actually quite problematic aspects of either their personalities or their actions and behaviours). For example, Indira Ghandi's often extremely harshly negative, uncompromising, unaccepting approach towards the Sikhs while she was prime minister of India (and in particular that she ordered the destruction of a very important and symbolic Sikh temple) very likely was one of the main contributing factors as to why she was assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards in 1984 and this piece of essential truth should really have at the very least been mentioned by Katherine Halligan, as needed to have been depicted the fact that Elizabeth I of England had her cousin Mary Queen of Scots beheaded (perhaps with just cause and for high treason, but for the author not even to point this out, it in my opinion does kind of make Halligan more than a trifle guilty of willfully omitting important historical and cultural information that might in some ways possibly tarnish the reputations of the 50 women and girls she has chosen to present to us, not to mention that for say Queen Isabella of Spain, whilst her support and even in many ways her creation of the Spanish Inquisition indeed is fortunately and thankfully mentioned, it does feel very much personally uncomfortable that Katherine Halligan, that the author certainly tends to approach this as more than a bit of an almost unimportant afterthought in some ways and in my opinion in a much less critical and less balanced manner than would likely have been the case if the featured and presented individual had been her husband King Ferdinand).
Now truth be told, I do in general much like and appreciate that the fifty women "pioneers" of Herstory: 50 Women and Girls Who Shook Up the World are ethnically diverse and spanning both the present and the past (and indeed sometimes the very much distant past) and that furthermore, women from all walks of life (and with many different careers, life stories, and thankfully not just scientists and politicians have been chosen) although personally, I would certainly have wanted and yes even needed a few more women who were/are graphic artists included and I definitely do find it kind of majorly sad that aside from Emily Bronte and Rigoberta Menchú, there seems to have been few women authors and poets mentioned. And really, why have there been NO Canadian women described and why has Katherine Halligan for the most part also completely ignored many of the more radical feminists of the 20th century? Where is a section on Rosa Luxembourg? Where is a chapter on Hannah Arendt? And what about Gloria Steinem or German feminist Alice Schwarzer? As while I do well realise that the author could not have chosen EVERY women (every girl) for Herstory: 50 Women and Girls Who Shook up the World, as someone who is pretty much a Socialist and rather left of centre especially with regard to economics, the fact that Halligan (except for the chapters on Emmeline Pankhurst, Anne Frank and Sophie Scholl) kind of ignores almost ALL of the more radical left wing women's liberation and rights fighters of the 20th century does kind of bother me and it rather contributes to my feeling that while Herstory: 50 Women and Girls Who Shook Up the World is a decent enough and educational start, that there still is very much much room for improvement (and frankly, that there is NO bibliography included, no suggestions for further reading and of course no source acknowledgements either, this really does academically and intellectually annoy and disappoint me to such an extent that even though I have definitely found Herstory: 50 Women and Girls Who Shook Up the World readable, approachable and indeed also of much potential interest, my final ranking can and will only be two stars, and a very low ranking two stars at that, as there are in my opinion simply too many holes, too many issues and potential shortcomings and yes indeed too many women that deserved to be included but have not been).