While Kleinbaum was trained as a historian, it was not as an ancient historian so all of her reading of Amazon legends is secondary and relies on translations. That isn't a problem for this book, because while she looks briefly at Amazon tales in the Greek world her focus is on how the stories have changed over the centuries in the Western world. She does an excellent job of addressing why women find the legend difficult to grasp and yet quite attractive. Her analysis of how useful the icon of the Amazon is to Western culture is first-rate so while I found myself disagreeing from time to time with her opinions I could follow the flow of logic and the evidence fairly well. I think she could have used more background on the ancient tales but hey, that's what my dissertation is.