Nancy F. Cott

Ostensibly about the history of marriage in the US, this book actually spend a good deal of time touching on the path to citizenship of many races and nationalities of people through the nations history. Although it has only a brief version of each, it's definitely has made me want to read more on these topics. Now to attempt to find good books on the immediate post slavery era and the history of Japanese American immigration…

I also found the section on Social Security and race very show more interesting and want to know more but this book did not go into enough detail (this is not necessarily a criticism as it is not the main point of this book). Need to find a book on that as well.

In general, I very much like reading this kind of book which summarizes it straight through the lens of one particular topic. It is often shocking to see how fast things change and just how little time has passed since certain norms were seem to be unavoidable that now seem unthinkable.

Obviously, the final chapter of this particular book does need an update and a new edition would probably be quite welcome. This is copyright 2000 and obviously there have been significant updates in marital policy since then. Nonetheless this book has been quite interesting and worthwhile, and I very much enjoyed reading it. show less

An intersting book about a womans role in the institution of marriage and how the said institution is delicately tied to political ideology. The book was stale at some points and the word 'repitition' comes to mind. Of particular intrest to me throughout the book was the female role in the marriage and how she deprived of a political role after marriage.

This is a very readable social history of women's experience in New England in the period after the Revolutionary War but before the heyday of the Industrial Revolution. I think Cott does a good job of interpreting women's lives within the context of the period, rather than measuring them against later 20th century values when the book was written. Despite the seemly fixed domestic sphere that women operated in, it was a time of change. It is this change, that I was particularly interested in.

Enriched by the wealth of new research into women's history, No Small Courage offers a lively chronicle of American experience, charting women's lives and experiences with fascinating immediacy from the precolonial era to the present. Individual stories and primary sources-including letters, diaries, and news reports-animate this history of the domestic, professional, and political efforts of American women.