The title [of Amazons] is misleading. There is only one Amazon here, Ms. Birdwell, and her martial weapon is a hockey stick. Amazons is her autobiography, with appropriately heavy emphasis on last year, when she made athletic history by being the first woman to play in the National Hockey League. Fans now look forward to her return under the New York Rangers' interesting new management, about which she says some perceptive things…. But Birdwell does not write primarily for sports fans, among whom the literacy rate is low. She writes for a higher audience—us—capable of appreciating such subtlety as that of her dust-jacket photo. In the picture she wears her Rangers uniform, but her flowing hair and a businesslike skate cover the end letters and reveal her as (in French) an angel.

There is something unexpected about an autobiography written, even by an angel, at such...