Great Women's Speeches: Speeches by Great Women to Empower and Inspire by Anna Russell is a wonderful collection that serves to highlight a wide range of women and speech acts. This is not meant to be a study nor a collection of biographies but a collection that will spur readers to explore those women who most touched them.

I am thankful that entire speeches were not included, some readers apparently don't realize that most speeches, at the moment they are given, serve and address multiple issues and audiences. The parts of the speeches that last are the parts that resonate beyond that singular historical moment. The rest of most speeches are almost meaningless unless one is studying that very specific historical moment. I am also thankful Russel mostly chose to contextualize the speakers with respect to the chosen speech, otherwise the book could easily have become unwieldy.

For what this book sets out to do, I think it struck the right mix of short excerpts and explanations across a wide range of time and women rather than get bogged down in more information and probably either limit the breadth or triple the length of the book.

This is not some "cutesy" book for children, though it is designed in a way to engage them. This is a sampling of speeches that touch on most of the important topics people have faced, and continue to face, so making the book more accessible to more people is far more important than making a dry book that would only appeal to those wanting to read every detail. This book is an excellent jumping off point for both young and old readers no matter how familiar they may be with the women included.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )