America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines

How refreshing! I'm a major history buff, so probably know more than most "laymen" about American history, but this book made me appreciate just how much American history goes unexplored because our traditional approach to "history" is largely male-centric, focusing on wars, politics, and technology. This book explores the same material but views it through a different lens, focusing on home, family, and social issues/mores/trends. In the process, the book reveals an astonishing amount of rarely-addressed information, wholly as important and relevant to understanding our country as all those books about world wars.

The book moves chronologically through time, from Virginia Dare to 2000, and is comprised of many short (3-4pg) chapters, show more each focused on a particular life or issue. The text is heavy on primary source information - actual quotes from women's diaries and historical documents - which makes each vignette feel refreshingly authentic. Yes, "women's issues" like the sufferagette movement receive attention, but they comprise a small part of the vast sweep of this book, which explores the changing ways in which Americans of various genders and race, over the past 400 years, have approached family, health, gender roles, politics, and culture.

I read this while on vacation at the beach and on almost every page found some tidbit of information so interesting that I had to share it with the family. As a result, there's now a queue to borrow my copy of the book - a queue which includes more men than women, by the way. show less

An easy to read, concise history of American told from the perspective of the nation's women. A lot of these stories I had never before heard. I got the impression that much of standard history doesn't take the feminine perspective into account. Fascinating and fun!

This should be required reading in history class. It does a great job of covering a lot of time, merging the experience of an average woman during a given era or location with focuses on notable women occasionally and then building upon it until we arrive at the modern American woman.

People sometimes like to refer to women and our role in the world as if it has always been stagnant, as if even being in the house has always meant the same thing. The choices and predicaments of each generation effect all of those that come after them and this book elaborates on just how the lives of women have changed since the first brave woman boarded a ship to come here. Part of what made the book great, was not taking sides between women. There are show more all sorts of us and the book tells our stories from more than one angle or perspective, equally mentioning the suffragettes and those women who didn't side with them.

Of course, the book cannot be comprehensive. It does a good job of covering as much ground as it can but it's constrained by pages and records. Still, Collins does a great job with what she has. show less

I thoroughly enjoyed this well-researched and fascinating book. It is a history of America through the lives of women, ordinary citizens as well as leaders and innovators. Most history books deal primarily with war, expansion and politics – and the men who dominated those events. They tend to leave out the women who participated in those endeavors, as well as the home and community life to which many of them contributed heavily.

I loved reading about the clothing and food of the times, the ways in which women managed households and children, the laws that bound them, and the astonishing strength it took for them to do what was asked of them, or refuse to do it. Without a book such as this that presents the other side of the story, it show more would be difficult to understand just how much women contributed to the history of America.

Written in intelligent, well-documented prose, it is an easy, entertaining and occasionally humorous read. I read each page eagerly and even after 450 pages, was sorry to see it finished. show less

Interesting and readable though. Starting with the first baby born in America - and a girl at that - the book looks at what countries the American women emigrated from, how the times changed for women through the centuries, marriage/family vs staying single, and all the influences of the times and culture on the American Woman.

An interesting overview of women's roles in America and American history over the past 400 years. Not surprisingly, lots of roadblocks and frustrations along the way for women. Given that this covers a long timeline and is not an encyclopedia, individuals and issues are not all covered in depth. But still, this is a good brush-up on American women's history, along with being thought-provoking.

Collins describes the lives of American women from the colonial days to the near present. She describes on the lives of normal women as well as the lives of the women remembered by history. She tells how women dealt with household duties on covered wagons and discusses how the phenomenon "going steady" increased premarital sex. There are stories of how women came together to abolish slavery while denying free colored women membership in their societies. By giving all of these perspectives, Collins avoids painting women as perfect.

One criticism: Collins seems to sometimes gives too little credit to the role of men. However, since she does this by omission, not by belittling men, I suspect that it is just because there was a lot to fit in show more the book and history from the perspective of men can be found in other places. show less