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Rating: 
Summary: Not bad a bad job
Review: As with any anthology, the 16 10-20 page biographies here are hit or miss. While the biographies don't do much in the way of helping the reader understand everyday colonial life, they do aid in allowing one to understand other aspects of colonial life. The best written are the biographies of Pocahontas by Kathleen Brown; Rev. John Cotton, Jr. by Sheila McIntyre; Bryan Sheehan by Margaret Connell Szasz; and Lewis Morris, Jr. by Michael Watson. Brown presents an example of early European-Amerindian relations and shows us the difficulty of determining what sources are truth versus what is self-promotion or legend. Cotton is a pastor twice accused of marital infidelity. His story gives us examples of how Puritans dealt with sinful citizens, of efforts to spread the Word of God to Amerindians, and of the importance of communication between community leaders. The story of Bryan Sheehan is an intersting read. We so often read success stories in American immigration. Sheehan is definately a failure: Roman-Catholic (and thus treated poorly in New England) and unable to hold a job with any promise of financial security, Sheehan joins the British Army during the French and Indian War. He survives several horrible battles to discover that, upon hearing a rumor of Sheehan's death, Bryan Sheehan's wife married another man and had a child by him. The Lewis Morris biography gives us an example of pre-Revolution politics in America. Of special note was the Anne Hutchinson biography by Marilyn Westerkamp. While it is obvious that her research was excellent and she succeeded in showing the reader that Hutchinson's popularity threatened the social order (e.g. she became too powerful and the religious leaders felt threatened) and the depth of Hutchinson's intelligence, Westerkamp didn't quite succeed in proving that Hutchinson's activities were not tolerated because she was a woman. The only two biographies I didn't enjoy were the biographies of French missionary Gabrial Segard and Amerindian translator Isabel Montour. The biographical information available on the former is not exactly extensive, making for a confusing biography. With regards to the latter, it is probably more a fault of the reader that he didn't care about the role of a translator in English-Native politics. Finally, in my opinion, not enough attention was paid to slavery in the American colonies. Olaudah Equiano was the only biography of a slave in this anthology, and it can hardly be said that his life was typical. A biography of some other person involved in slavery would have been informative as well--be it a slave, slave owner, slave trader, slave-master, slave-owner-turned abolitionist, etc. This could have been done at the expense of one of the many European-American cultural brokers biographies.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad a bad job
Review: As with any anthology, the 16 10-20 page biographies here are hit or miss. While the biographies don't do much in the way of helping the reader understand everyday colonial life, they do aid in allowing one to understand other aspects of colonial life. The best written are the biographies of Pocahontas by Kathleen Brown; Rev. John Cotton, Jr. by Sheila McIntyre; Bryan Sheehan by Margaret Connell Szasz; and Lewis Morris, Jr. by Michael Watson. Brown presents an example of early European-Amerindian relations and shows us the difficulty of determining what sources are truth versus what is self-promotion or legend. Cotton is a pastor twice accused of marital infidelity. His story gives us examples of how Puritans dealt with sinful citizens, of efforts to spread the Word of God to Amerindians, and of the importance of communication between community leaders. The story of Bryan Sheehan is an intersting read. We so often read success stories in American immigration. Sheehan is definately a failure: Roman-Catholic (and thus treated poorly in New England) and unable to hold a job with any promise of financial security, Sheehan joins the British Army during the French and Indian War. He survives several horrible battles to discover that, upon hearing a rumor of Sheehan's death, Bryan Sheehan's wife married another man and had a child by him. The Lewis Morris biography gives us an example of pre-Revolution politics in America. Of special note was the Anne Hutchinson biography by Marilyn Westerkamp. While it is obvious that her research was excellent and she succeeded in showing the reader that Hutchinson's popularity threatened the social order (e.g. she became too powerful and the religious leaders felt threatened) and the depth of Hutchinson's intelligence, Westerkamp didn't quite succeed in proving that Hutchinson's activities were not tolerated because she was a woman. The only two biographies I didn't enjoy were the biographies of French missionary Gabrial Segard and Amerindian translator Isabel Montour. The biographical information available on the former is not exactly extensive, making for a confusing biography. With regards to the latter, it is probably more a fault of the reader that he didn't care about the role of a translator in English-Native politics. Finally, in my opinion, not enough attention was paid to slavery in the American colonies. Olaudah Equiano was the only biography of a slave in this anthology, and it can hardly be said that his life was typical. A biography of some other person involved in slavery would have been informative as well--be it a slave, slave owner, slave trader, slave-master, slave-owner-turned abolitionist, etc. This could have been done at the expense of one of the many European-American cultural brokers biographies.
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