50 Women Every Christian Should Know: Learning From Heroines of the Faith

I usually read lots of fiction and wanted to move more towards biographies, I thought this would be a good place to start in trying to decide on whose biography to read in more detail. Now, instead of having the problem of not knowing anyone worthwhile to read a biography about, now there are so many that I want to read and my problem is deciding which one to start with! This is a great book to read if you want a summary of women who listened to God and followed Him despite the opposition they faced. It gives courage to follow God's calling in our own life, because in comparison, we probably wouldn't even face half the persecution that they did, so we have no excuse not to follow God's calling.

Michelle DeRusha has written an informative book. I particularly appreciated some of the biographies stretching back in history, despite the difficulty of researching reliable and detailed information. Michelle's introductory and concluding paragraphs gave an insight into her thoughts on the contribution of each woman. Interestingly, I happened to be reading Geoffrey Blainey's 'A Short History of Christianity' at the same time so it was great to hear about the contributions of women when so much of Christian (and indeed secular) history is about men. I was impressed by the great variety of expressions of faith, reminding us there is no one formula to having a personal faith and indeed the expression of it. A fellow reader and reviewer asked if there were any Australian women but unfortunately there are not (the book has an American bias) - the one drawback, as I'm sure there are plenty of Australian women worthy. The book is also a great 'taster' and I hope to read some detailed biographies of some of the women mentioned that I hadn't heard of before.