Female Fire Fighter Calendar

The author of the international bestsellers "Gates of Fire and "Tides of War delivers his most gripping and imaginative novel of the ancient world-a stunning epic of love and war that breathes life into the grand myth of the ferocious female warrior culture of the Amazons. Steven Pressfield has gained a passionate worldwide following for his magnificent novels of ancient Greece, "Gates of Fire and "Tides of War. In "Last of the Amazons, Pressfield has surpassed himself, re-creating a vanished world in a brilliant novel that will delight his loyal readers and bring legions more to his singular and powerful restoration of the past. In the time before Homer, the legendary Theseus, King of Athens (an actual historical figure), set sail on a journey that brought him into the land of "tal Kyrte, the "free people," a nation of proud female warriors whom the Greeks called "Amazons." The Amazons, bound to each other as lovers as well as fighters, distrusted the Greeks, with their boastful talk of "civilization." So when the great war queen Antiope fell in love with Theseus and fled with the Greeks, the mighty Amazon nation rose up in rage. "Last of the Amazons is not merely a masterful tale of war and revenge. Pressfield has created a cast of extraordinarily vivid characters, from the unforgettable Selene, whose surrender to the Greeks does nothing to tame her; to her lover, Damon, an Athenian warrior who grows to cherish the wild Amazon ways; to the narrator, Bones, a young girl from a noble family who was nursed by Selene from birth and secretly taught the Amazon way; to the great Theseus, the tragic king; and to Antiope, the noble queen who betrayed "tal Kyrte for the love ofTheseus. With astounding immediacy and extraordinary attention to military detail, Pressfield transports readers into the heat and terror of war. Equally impressive is his creation of the Amazon nation, its people, its rituals and myths, its greatness and savagery.

"Silk and Steel: Women at Arms is the first comprehensive presentation on the subject of women and firearms. No object has had a greater impact on world history over the past 650 years than the firearm, and a surprising number of women have been keen on the subject: as shooters, hunters, collectors, engravers, and even gunmakers. From Queen Elizabeth I through her descendant Queen Elizabeth II, the numbers of aristocratic female arms enthusiasts, particularly shooters, have been impressive. Among those regal personages: Russia's Empresses Elizabeth and Catherine the Great, France's Marie Antoinette, and Great Britain's Duchess of Devonshire. In the New World, Thomas Jefferson's matched pair of Queen Anne-style flintlock pistols were made by London gunmaker Mary Dealtry. Pioneer American women took bold steps to defend home and hearth, and their courage earned them the right to vote in Western states, where hardiness and self-reliance were taken for granted. As Jefferson himself admonished: "[The gun gives] boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind." Many women were comfortable with firearms in early America, and among the world's most famous women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was Annie Oakley--"Little Sure Shot." Turning back the clock to the time of Joan of Arc, R. L. Wilson shows how women have played a vital role in armed conflicts. For many centuries, women went to war--sometimes in the guise of men--without their comrades knowing that they were present. Increasingly, in our own era, there are female fighter pilots and cadets at West Point and at all the U.S. service academies. The 2001-2002 war in Afghanistan saw Northern Alliance womentrained to fire AK-47s, some even shooting their Taliban tormentors.