Mari K. Eder

Mari K. Eder is an American author, speaker, and retired U.S. Army major general whose work includes military history, communication, and accounts of women overlooked in public memory. Her service included senior positions on the Army Staff, work with the Army Reserve and the Department of Defense’s Reserve Forces Policy Board, and public-affairs leadership at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies.

Eder’s historical books include The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line, about women associated with World War II, and The Girls Who Fought Crime, about an early New York policewoman. The Girls Who Beat the Odds, published in 2026, extends that interest to American sports history. Her subjects are connected by contributions that received less recognition than their achievements warranted, with attention to the institutional barriers encountered by women entering public roles.

Her professional writing also examines leadership and strategic communication. She has lectured on communication and public diplomacy at the NATO School and Sweden’s International Training Command, and her bibliography includes Leading the Narrative: The Case for Strategic Communication and American Cyberscape: Trials and the Path to Trust. Case studies and articles on military ethics accompany that work. These subjects provide a background for historical narratives concerned with leadership, service, and how individual contributions are recorded.

Multi-sport Books

The Girls Who Beat the Odds: Stories of Women Who Changed the Course of Sports History: Eder profiles American women whose achievements helped change sports history but have often received limited attention. The collection covers athletes from the early twentieth century to the modern era, connecting individual careers with the opportunities available to later generations. It examines persistence and barriers to recognition while placing today’s expanding interest in women’s sports within a longer historical record. Published in 2026.

The sports collection is organized around recovering contributions rather than producing a single ranking of famous competitors. It connects pioneering athletes with the women who followed them, considering how participation and public visibility changed over a century. The publisher places the book within Eder’s continuing interest in people whose work was underestimated, linking sporting achievement with the broader questions of access and recognition that recur in her earlier histories.

Other Books

The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line: Untold Stories of the Women Who Changed the Course of World War II: This collection presents the lives of fifteen women whose work during World War II has often been overshadowed. Eder follows contributions made in and out of uniform, including scientific research, assistance to refugees, and survival under persecution. The stories examine what the women accomplished and why their service deserves a more prominent place in the history of their generation. Published in 2021.

Among the subjects are scientist Liane B. Russell, Holocaust survivor Gena Turgel, and sisters Ida and Louise Cook, who helped refugees escape persecution. Their experiences span very different forms of wartime action. By bringing those lives together, Eder records service outside the most familiar military narratives and the work that continued after the war, including research and the preservation of testimony.

The Girls Who Fought Crime: The Untold True Story of the Country's First Female Investigator and Her Crime-Fighting Squad: Eder reconstructs the career of Mary ‘Mae’ Foley, an early New York policewoman who worked against both criminals and restrictions placed on women in policing. The narrative follows investigations and public service during a period of major social change. Foley’s professional experiences accompany an account of her efforts to expand the roles available to other women in the force. Published in 2023.