Helpful Score: 3
This is a book written by a professional historian, but it doesn't feel like it. All debates among scholars, persnickety academic language, and non-essential details are left to the footnotes, leaving behind an absorbing tale of one woman's life, and the ways her life intersects with changes in the American nation. The industrialization of the North and how it unsettled the social order of New England farms, the stringent and sometimes unwritten social code of Mobile, AL as the nation tips into civil war, and the simultaneous fluidity and rigidity of race all play in a role in this woman's life. Based on the documents from one working-class family and a rich understanding of the historical times in which they lived, this is truly a masterpiece of historical writing. Everybody I've recommended it to has found it both enlightening and a great read.
