Germany, in the final years of the Third Reich. Hermann Karnau is a sound engineer obsessed with recording the human voice in all its variations—the rantings of leaders, the roar of crowds, the rasp of throats constricted in fear—and indifferent to everything else. Employed by the Nazis, his assignments take him to Party rallies, to the Eastern Front, and into the household of Joseph Goebbels. There he meets Helga, the eldest daughter: bright, good-natured, and just beginning to suspect th...

Here, in this captivating graphic history, are women—strong, powerful, intelligent, enterprising, inferior to no one—situated as never before at the heart of understanding our history, as far back as the Stone Age record can take usHistory is written by the victors, and the victors are men. This assumption colors our view of every past era: The fittest survive. The strongest rule. “Human nature” is intrinsically warlike.The record tells a different...