Rating: 
Summary: Now for background...
Review: I picked up Ulrich's book on Martha Ballard for background and to get a better sense of life in New England during this "Dark Age" of American genealogy research. My ancestors, especially the women, are lightly documented during this time period, their lives even less known than their husbands, brothers, and fathers. Martha Ballard (unlike many women) moved around Hallowell, Maine--not across New England into New York and then to Ohio only to be buried at the end of an exhausting life with a wooden marker to mark her contribution. Martha stayed put and recorded her accounts, the weather, her exchanges with neighbors, births, deaths, and the sensational events of her day. Without Martha's record the vast majority of her neighbors and family would lost to history with no record of birth or death, let alone the homely remarks about the pain of losing a child or frustration with a son's less than ideal behavior. This is a wonderful book, not just about Martha's life, but of her time. It helps describe the quality of life among people, their relationships, and interdependence with one another. It adds another dimension to what I understand about my New England antecedents. In particular, it adds hugely to my dim understanding of the shadowy figures of the women...in Martha, they come to life as strong, capable, and a vital part of life in New England. They are not the silent handmaidens of history. As Ulrich points out, without Martha's diary, even her first name might have been questioned by subsequent researchers--this is certainly the case of many women, whose identity became completely submerged in their husband's. The historical research is excellent and well-documented. The writing is solid and communicates clearly without the dry, academic yawn factor. Ulrich presents her point, then supports it. From a historian, I expect no more...nor less. It's an outstanding read.
Rating:
Summary: A Fantasitc Book!!
Review: I read this book when it was first published and it didn't surprise me that it won a Pulitzer's Prize. It's one of the best biographies I've ever read, and since I'm a history buff, that made it all the more special. I've read and re-read it so many times that it's falling apart (and it's a hardback copy!). I'll be buying a new one and probably one for my mother, too, since she's the one who lent it to me (and then I wouldn't give it back). For anyone who's interested in what women were like at the end of the eighteenth century and the roles they filled at home and in the community--this book fills the bill. Thank you, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, for putting Martha Ballard's journal writings into perspective for women of the 1990's. I didn't want the story to end.
Rating:
Summary: It changes everything
Review: Laura Ulrich rewrites history, using an overlooked diary written by a midwife 200 years ago. In 1928, Virginia Woolf (in A Room of One's Own)complained they we don't know how women in the past spent their time. We don't, and it's extraordinary how much a little bit of information about these women can change the way we think about society, women and history. The brilliance of this book lies in its ordinariness. Martha Ballard's life is not described in such detail because of anything she did that was unusual or exceptional. She was an ordinary women who worked hard and raised her family like so many have done. No, the fascination comes from the fact that such women (and their impact on society and social change) are usually invisible to us. Sometimes, as a modern woman, I find it hard not to despise many of the women you read about in history books: pathetic, passive, ignorant, helpless, victims, or Great Heroines. Martha Ballard is just like a woman we might know today: bossy, sensible, often (I would imagine) fairly stubborn. She had great influence on the society in which she lived. It's a mistake to think that this book is only for feminists or history buffs(as some have written) just because it's about a woman. It involves a qualitative shift in the way we think about history, and as such it demands our respect. This is one of the most important books I have read for years, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
Rating:
Summary: It changes everything
Review: Laura Ulrich rewrites history, using an overlooked diary written by a midwife 200 years ago. In 1928, Virginia Woolf (in A Room of One's Own)complained they we don't know how women in the past spent their time. We don't, and it's extraordinary how much a little bit of information about these women can change the way we think about society, women and history. The brilliance of this book lies in its ordinariness. Martha Ballard's life is not described in such detail because of anything she did that was unusual or exceptional. She was an ordinary women who worked hard and raised her family like so many have done. No, the fascination comes from the fact that such women (and their impact on society and social change) are usually invisible to us. Sometimes, as a modern woman, I find it hard not to despise many of the women you read about in history books: pathetic, passive, ignorant, helpless, victims, or Great Heroines. Martha Ballard is just like a woman we might know today: bossy, sensible, often (I would imagine) fairly stubborn. She had great influence on the society in which she lived. It's a mistake to think that this book is only for feminists or history buffs(as some have written) just because it's about a woman. It involves a qualitative shift in the way we think about history, and as such it demands our respect. This is one of the most important books I have read for years, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
Rating:
Summary: Martha Ballard is an extraordinary woman of her time
Review: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich has done a wonderful thing: she has brought us a woman, a real woman who lived out her life doing what she felt she needed to do in a time that was full of questions for those that faced making a new country work. Ulrich brings to life Martha Ballard in every way, as much as the diary allows. By the time I finished the book, I felt I knew Martha Ballard, as if she lived next door to me, nurturing me through life. Ulrich is a wonderful story-teller, filling in the blanks and taking us back in word and time. An excellent book for anyone who wants to step beyond the text books and discover a real person making her way in our newly formed country.
Rating:
Summary: Martha was fantastic!
Review: Martha Moore Ballard is my great x5 grandmother, to read the book and to view the movie was very moving to me. I am also in the medical field. I am a descendant of her son Jon. I attended the movie with other ancestors of Martha and we all enjoyed it. The book shows life was not easy for a pioneer woman.
Rating:
Summary: A generous step back in women's history
Review: Nearly a decade after this book won the Pulitzer Prize, I still recommend it frequently to anyone interested in women's history, Early American life or Maine history. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich uses the diary of an 18th century midwife in the Maine woods as her primary resource to weave a vivid picture of what life was like just after the Revolutionary War. As an academic work, there are 45 pages of footnotes at the back of the book, but they were so interesting I used two bookmarks while reading!
Rating:
Summary: Historically interesting.
Review: Perusing a personal diary (portions of the diary are included in the book) which contain sentence fragments and short descriptions of the day's activity, Laurel Ulrich's book, "A Midwife's Tale: The Diary of Martha Ballard," is a fascinating reconstruction in the life of Martha Ballard, a midwife who, during the Revolutionary War, is characterized as a feminist in her own right. By choice, many women left their homes to join their husbands to help fight the war; others were driven away by Brittish soldiers; but Martha Ballard, unaffected by the War and American Politics, resided at home with her husband, family, and friends. Incredibly, Ulrich writes in narrative style that Martha Ballard had performed in 27 years more than 800 deliveries in and around Hallowell, Maine, produced and distributed drugs, prepared burials and dissections, at a time when medicine was in its infancy. This is a true story of a woman who had been independent, strong, and productive throughout her life. In the environment surrounding Martha's world, "A Midwife's Tale" also portrays a 'women's community' that characterizes an almost perfect social and economic ideal of their time. The winner of numerous prizes, historians, history enthusiasts, and feminists will find this 352 page book (not including endnotes and index) a wonderful and interesting read.
Rating:
Summary: Historically interesting.
Review: Perusing a personal diary (portions of the diary are included in the book) which contain sentence fragments and short descriptions of the day's activity, Laurel Ulrich's book, "A Midwife's Tale: The Diary of Martha Ballard," is a fascinating reconstruction in the life of Martha Ballard, a midwife who, during the Revolutionary War, is characterized as a feminist in her own right. By choice, many women left their homes to join their husbands to help fight the war; others were driven away by Brittish soldiers; but Martha Ballard, unaffected by the War and American Politics, resided at home with her husband, family, and friends. Incredibly, Ulrich writes in narrative style that Martha Ballard had performed in 27 years more than 800 deliveries in and around Hallowell, Maine, produced and distributed drugs, prepared burials and dissections, at a time when medicine was in its infancy. This is a true story of a woman who had been independent, strong, and productive throughout her life. In the environment surrounding Martha's world, "A Midwife's Tale" also portrays a 'women's community' that characterizes an almost perfect social and economic ideal of their time. The winner of numerous prizes, historians, history enthusiasts, and feminists will find this 352 page book (not including endnotes and index) a wonderful and interesting read.
Rating:
Summary: the lives too often unrecorded
Review: Thanks to gifted historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, I hear the voice of Martha Ballard as she goes about her productive, meaningful life in late 1700s Massachusetts. I also feel her shining, transcedent spirit nearby as I read. Martha's diary is filled with the cycle of neverending chores that still characterize the lives of women today. As caretakers, we cook, launder, clean, over and over again. Martha's diary also opens our eyes to the lot of our earlier sisters as they lived through (if fortunate, they lived) an 18-month to two year cycle of pregnancy, birth, and lactation.
Martha ministers to them both in body and spirit; and the entire, closely bonded community of post-colonial wives and mothers is depicted in her story. "I returned home at 10 hour morn, find my house alone and everything in Arms. Did not find time to still down till 2 pm." How this still resonates as women try combine work in the outside world with the unrelenting demands of domesticity! Kudoes to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich for this brilliantly edited, extremely necessary part of American history---a woman's life as told by observant, compassionate, hard-working Martha Ballard. Ulrich has included statistics of maternal and infant mortality that cause one to question the wisdom of the "heroic intervention" style of obstetrics that came later: Martha experienced only about a 4% loss rate, which stands up impressively until the days when antibiotics reduced the mortality rate to insignificance.
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