I want to thank Netgalley and the author for gifting me the ebook. A great historical novel. Highly recommend.

I appreciate the publisher allowing me to read this book. this is a well written book about a fascinating subject I knew nothing about. highly recommend

This book was rather a miss for me. the title "Iron Women: The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad" suggested a book examining women who directly influenced the building of the early railroads. And a few of the stories were about women with direct influence on the railroad industry- the president of a railroad line, the woman who created modern refrigerated boxcars, a civil engineer who worked on railroads. Others seemed to have really no place here, like a madam (prostitute) honored by the railroad at her funeral. Chapters were generally short, the writing was more like note-taking and there was no independent analysis on anything.
Not a book I would recommend to anyone looking to discover more on the subjects of early American railroads, the American West, or women in either, although the bibliography was impressive.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Having enjoyed Chris Enss' Wicked Women: Notorious, Mischievous, and Wayward Ladies from the Old West some years ago, I had high hopes for Iron Women. However, the title is a bit misleading, and I didn't much care for the writing, what there was of it. It seems more like notes made in the course of research, or verbatim transcribing of quotes, and women didn't actually work on laying the the physical rails.

Their contributions were in rail-adjacent items: engineering better bearings on axle wheels, designing the interior of the cars, creating refrigerated boxcars, and so on. All these things, of course, are incredibly important to rail travel overall, for both people and goods. There were other women, from the bad side of the tracks, as it were, as well: prostitutes and train robbers also plied their trades. I don't see, however, how these women contributed anything to "building the railroad", and the text didn't enlighten me to see how they were.

I was disappointed in this outing. Two out of five stars. Sorry, this was a miss (ha!) for me.

Thanks to Rowan & Littlefield and NetGalley for the reading copy.

inventors, women, nonfiction, historical-figures, historical-places-events, historical-research, trains, telegraphy*****

The documentation and presentation are very similar to Publish or Perish theses. The women included worked as telegraphers, the owner of narrow gauge railroad, a travel writer, train robber, one who developed the modern refrigerator car, a journalist, civil engineers, an architect, lawyers, and a railroad muralist. The intense research is meticulously documented and attests to its validity. The title is a little off center, but how else might one title a book on the importance of women in railroad history? I enjoyed the read (but then, I really like Charles River Editors).
I requested and received a free temporary ebook from Rowman & Littlefield/TwoDot via NetGalley. Thank you.

I loved reading this short but informative book about women's roles in the early railroad, from the refrigeration car to the painted murals inside the cars and leadership in a male-dominated industry.
I definitely learned a lot about the era and the accomplishments of these strong women.

This book covers a nice little segment of history that we don't hear much about, which is how women drove progress to the western US through their contributions to the railroads and the hospitality industry that supported railroad travel.

The book wasn't exactly what I expected because I thought it would be more about women who were somehow involved in building the transcontinental railroad, whereas this was all about activities after that milestone event. Some of the contributions discussed in this book were truly remarkable for their time, such as the improved design of refrigerated boxcars, better windows for passenger cars etc. But some of the women discussed in this book were socialites, actresses, waitresses or journalists that were really just out on a fabulous journey. I didn't think they really qualified as "Iron" women, but they were at least tangentially associated with railroads at some point.

The two chapters that covered the Fred Harvey houses were a little redundant - it was pretty interesting reading about the architect that built those houses, but when the next chapter covered the Harvey girls, and even used some of the exact same quotes (e.g. Will Bill), it felt like the author just crammed in that chapter with a lot less attention to her story lines.

#Netgalley #IronWomen

I had high hopes for this book, as I'm interested in women's history and railroad history. It touched on the lives of several different women who had some connection to railroads, whether as employees or passengers. Unfortunately, I wish it had gone deeper into analysis on the lives of these women. The book had numerous lengthy quotes from other sources which I felt really carried the book. While it was an interesting read and fascinating topic, I wish it had more unique writing rather than primarily quotes from other sources.

This book had an interesting topic and a lot of potential. The pictures were good additions but unfortunately, the book is a difficult read. The content consists of mostly verbatim quotes and little to no analysis, independent thought, or conclusions. Not sure I've ever read a book before where every single paragraph had at least one footnote. I would not recommend this book to others.

Iron Women examines women who contributed to the rise of the railroads. The chapters cover inventors, writers, bosses, and the infamous Harvey Girls. Women played an integral part in making the railroads a significant factor in US history. The chapter I find the most interesting was the one on the HArvey Girls. I had a vague idea who they were, but I had no idea it was a chain of restaurants and hotels along the southwest that gave jobs to thousands of women from the 1890s-1930s.

In IRON WOMEN, Chris Enss focuses on women’s contributions to the railroads during the 1800s and early 1900s. Men might have physically built the railroads, but women made lasting contributions and helped inspire travel. Enss covers female telegraphers, the Harvey Girls, and women who created the refrigerated boxcars, designed more comfortable passenger cars, promoted westward travel through artwork or written pieces, and an architect who built some of the Harvey Houses and the tourist sites at the Grand Canyon. Some of the women Enss focused on were a bit out in left field—including famous train robber Laura Bullion, a prostitute who was murdered and later had a train car named after her, and Lily Langtry who had a specially made train car for her travels throughout the United States.

While an interesting read, I didn’t feel as if the book really had much focus on the railroad.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This just wasn't for me.. I got about a chapter in and couldn't take any more. The writing was just... bad. Some of the sentence structures made me wonder if I was reading a high school paper. Short incomplete mini-biographies were thrown in as if it made perfect sense to do so - and the questions those left unanswered were far more interesting than what I was being told! It may simply be that as someone who prefers the deep dive academic history stuff to this pop history distillation I just wasn't the target market for this.