When Peggy Carter first appeared on the screen in Marvel's Captain America, my reaction was, "Oh, that's clearly Hollywood imposing modern sensibilities on World War II. There weren't women serving in the military back then." Well, it turns out I was wrong. Very wrong. Women served in every branch of the U.S. military during the war, and not just as nurses. But, like virtually every gain by women, this opportunity didn't come easily. Even after they won the right to serve, women's contributions were consistently devalued and often went unremembered. That's the reason Lena S. Andrews wrote Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II.

Andrews' narrative begins well before Pearl Harbor. We can only comprehend these military women's struggles and contributions when we understand the context in which their divisions were formed. The U.S. was very ...