Alpern draws together the available material on this peculiar institution into an interesting and readable book. The author's meticulous literary and archival research indicates that these females were indeed formidable warriors in the turbulent nineteenth-century era of the slave trade and subsequent European colonial conquest ... Alpern's work is an informative study.
W. Arens, Choice Alpern does very well ... Read morein assembling most of the evidence about these intimidating women whose courage impressed even the Foreign Legion. He produces a very detailed picture from a wide variety of European and African sources. He provides a readable narrative of Dahomean military history from the state's origins to its defeat by France in 1892, ... [and] a mass of information on what these women wore, ate and sang, how they were recruited, trained and mobilised.
Richard Rathbone, The Times Alpern has written an impressively comprehensive study covering all aspects of this extraordinary military force - he describes them in fascinating detail - Altogether he has made an important scholarly contribution to the history of nineteenth-century West Africa in which the Amazon achievement has until now been scarcely mentioned.
Christopher Fyfe, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History … and today they [the Amazons] exist as no more than footnotes to history. Only one scholarly work has been written about these women, Amazons of Black Sparta by Stanley B. Alpern.
Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest A succint, yet comprehensive, survey of the history of Dahomey. ... Alpern is by no means the first writer to give an account of the Amazons of Dahomey. Yet, his is by far the most detailed and most convincing. ... Truly, Alpern's portrait of the Amazons is a well deserved encomium to the courage and dedication of these intrepid women warriors. ... [and] the feather in the cap of this extremely well-written book is [its] remarkable empathy.
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