Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating Look Into a Dynamic Woman's Life
Review: This is a fascinating look into a dynamic woman's life. There is a great deal of "personality" and drama in the seemingly mundane diary entries. The author is truly gifted to have seen past the ho-hum recordings of daily life and pulled out the diary's real worth. The midwife's live is rich, full, and busy! However, the author weaves in plenty of historical background, too, using the diary as a stepping-off point to discuss local history, legal and social issues of the time, women's roles in economics, religion, etc. The book is quite enjoyable and allows the reader to connect with the past from a new angle. I have to include this note, though. In some instances, the book is really quite academic. I can imagine it being used to supplement a history or women's study class. It is not a light biography, to curl up and relax with. But, don't let that put you off :-)!
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Look Into a Dynamic Woman's Life
Review: This is a fascinating look into a dynamic woman's life. There is a great deal of "personality" and drama in the seemingly mundane diary entries. The author is truly gifted to have seen past the ho-hum recordings of daily life and pulled out the diary's real worth. The midwife's live is rich, full, and busy! However, the author weaves in plenty of historical background, too, using the diary as a stepping-off point to discuss local history, legal and social issues of the time, women's roles in economics, religion, etc. The book is quite enjoyable and allows the reader to connect with the past from a new angle. I have to include this note, though. In some instances, the book is really quite academic. I can imagine it being used to supplement a history or women's study class. It is not a light biography, to curl up and relax with. But, don't let that put you off :-)!
Rating:
Summary: A must for lovers of early American history
Review: This is the most fascinating journal/historical essay book that I have read in a long time. A common dilemma when reading journals is the lack of context regarding their historical times. Too often, context is provided in an introduction or brief footnotes. On the other side, I am often disappointed by biographies that provide very little of the primary source and instead rely heavily on the author's synthesizing. Ulrich's essays on Martha Ballard's journals provide a wonderful combination of these two forms. With such terse journal entries, a casual reader would miss so much, were it not for Ulrich's delving into Martha's world and enriching the context. I also would highly recommend the PBS video about Ulrich's project.
Rating:
Summary: a moving account of a woman's life
Review: Ulrich's book is a moving account in an underexplored area of American History--the lives and economies of early American women. This book is a double triumph--Martha Ballard kept a detailed diary for almost three decades and Ulrich rescued the dairy from oblivion to create a luminous work of scholarship. This book was moving and engaging beyond almost any work of history I have ever read. Nothing else I have ever read has given me a better feeling of what it would be like to live as a woman in those days. What a triumph!
Rating:
Summary: Inspired me to major in history in college.
Review: Ulrich's book provides a fecundity of specifics to a genre destined to be overgeneralized. Her excruciatingly detailed research and beautiful writing together create a book which both explores an individual biography and illuminates women's history in the period. The depth of her look at one woman in a single town inspired me to do my own local history research using women's diaries. For anyone interest in women, American history or the techniques of social history this book is a must-read.
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