Her Best Shot

This title features from Molly Pitcher to Patty Hearst. The gun-toting woman holds enormous symbolic significance in American culture. Laura Browder examines the relationship between women and guns in America and the ways in which the figure of the armed woman has served as a lightning rod for cultural issues. In an entertaining and provocative analysis, she looks at women including Deborah Sampson, who disguised herself as a man to fight in the American Revolution; Pauline Cushman, who posed as a Confederate to spy for Union forces during the Civil War; Wild West sure-shot Annie Oakley; African explorer Osa Johnson; 1930s gangsters Ma Barker and Bonnie Parker; and Patty Hearst, the hostage-turned-revolutionary-turned-victim.