RaveThe Wall Street JournalMs. Nicholson never blames women for concentrating on their looks ... Balancing wide-ranging research with lively storytelling, Ms. Nicholson doesn’t merely humanize history, she makes it fun ... The author effortlessly pulls from all manner of histories and periodicals, fiction and film, and quotes from the memoirs of women famous and obscure.
Michelle Dean
MixedThe New York Times Book Review\"A virtue of her book is that it shows how each woman, by wielding a pen as if it were a scalpel or a scimitar, confounded the gender norm of niceness and placed her analytical prowess front and center ... For readers unfamiliar with the work of these women, Sharp should be eye-opening. Dean traverses the intellectual landscape of the 20th century at an easy gallop ... For those who have lived with these writers for years, Dean can come up short ... Dean’s own writing, direct and lively, can get too loosely conversational — too wordy and imprecise. Her chatty approach to these formidable women makes them seem accessible, and that’s a good thing. But a blue pencil is as strong as a sword, and more cut and thrust would have made this book sharper.\
