The fabric of ancient history is stitched heavily with stories of dramatic politics, conquest, and war, all with men firmly at the center of action. But women played just as vital and central a role in antiquity's most consequential events, as classicist Daisy Dunn (The Shadow of Vesuvius) elegantly details in The Missing Thread.

Dunn observes that countless histories of the ancient world are "ineluctably male" and shares her vision of the classical world as one that is not so much about women as "a history of antiquity written through women." Mining a wealth of archaeological and literary sources, Dunn also includes previously undiscovered material to present 3,000 years of ancient history with women doing more than just weaving or baking: many possessed property, ran businesses, oversaw estates, wrote poetry, and even went to war.

Beginning in Minoan Crete...