This first comprehensive bibliography of the life and work of colonial women helps to foster an historical understanding of the rights, privileges, and functions of women in today's society. The Syllabus, containing 1082 items, is organized to provide an inclusive picture of the colonial woman in all aspects of her life and work. It includes references giving insight into home life with its manifold problems and dangers, the evolution of the colonial woman's status as owned property to being an independent owner of property, the leadership she gave to the religious life of the colonies, the contributions she made to cultural life, her part in the developing political life, and the extent of her participation in economic life. The Bibliography contains 765 books 309 magazine articles, and eight pictorial publications. To facilitate the study of individual women of note, the List of 104 Outstanding Women includes references.

Contains letters, journals, and reminiscences showing the impact of the frontier on women's lives and the role of women in the West.

Each entry within this guide outlines scholarly books, authors, editors and publishers that exhibit the most useful information for research. Following each detailed citation is a brief summary of the book. Each book listed covers a wide variety of subjects in American history including Native Americans, slavery, gender and migration to rural life, agriculture, politics, government and communication. This volume is part of a series of annotated bibliographies on early American history and culture. Extensive indexes, thematic chapters and book summaries will assist any researcher in an easy manner. Aside from outlining fantastic scholarly books, this book includes chapters on general early American history, historiography and public history to name a few. This is the only comprehensive guide to early American history and culture for this period and it indicates which books from the 1960s have been most influential in the journal literature of the past twenty-five years.

"All human beings are practicing historians," writes Gerda Lerner. "We live our lives; we tell our stories. It is as natural as breathing." It is as important as breathing, too. History shapes our self-definition and our relationship to community; it locates us in time and place and helps to give meaning to our lives. History can be the vital thread that holds a nation together, as demonstrated most strikingly in the case of Jewish history. Conversely, for women, who have lived in a world in which they apparently had no history, its absence can be devastating. In Why History Matters, Lerner brings together her thinking and research of the last sixteen years, combining personal reminiscences with innovative theory that illuminate the importance of history and the vital role women have played in it. Why History Matters contains some of the most significant thinking and writing on history that Lerner has done in her entire career--a summation of her life and work. The chapters are divided into three sections, each widely different from the others, each revelatory of Lerner as a woman and a feminist. We read first of Lerner's coming to consciousness as a Jewish woman. There are moving accounts of her early life as a refugee in America, her return to Austria fifty years after fleeing the Nazis (to discover a nation remarkable both for the absence of Jews and for the anti-Semitism just below the surface), her slow assimilation into American life, and her decision to be a historian. If the first section is personal, the second focuses on more professional concerns. Included here is a fascinating essay on nonviolent resistance, tracing the idea from the Quakers (such as Mary Dyer), to abolitionists such as Theodore Dwight Weld (the "most mobbed man" in America), to Thoreau's essay Civil Disobedience, then across the sea to Tolstoy and Gandhi, before finally returning to America during the civil rights movement of the 1950s. There are insightful essays on "American Values" and on the tremendous advances women have made in the twentieth century, as well as Lerner's presidential address to the Organization of American Historians, which outlines the contributions of women to the field of history and the growing importance of women as a subject of history. The highlight of the final section of the book is Lerner's bold and innovative look at the issues of class and race as they relate to women, an essay that distills her thinking on these difficult subjects and offers a coherent conceptual framework that will prove of lasting interest to historians and intellectuals. A major figure in women's studies and long-term activist for women's issues, a founding member of NOW and a past president of the Organization of American Historians, Gerda Lerner is a pioneer in the field of Women's History and one of its leading practitioners. Why History Matters is the summation of the work and thinking of this distinguished historian.

This anthology of female experience in America, draws on the letters, diaries, speeches, and biographies of women from Colonial days to the early days of the women's movement. There are chapters on childhood, marriage, motherhood, single life, housewifery, old age and death.

Women have always made major contributions to the success of agribusiness and farm operations, but until now there has been little scholarship on the business characteristics, roles, and organizations and activities of farm women in farms and ranches in the United States. This is the first study to deal with farm women as entrepreneurs. Its focus is on demographic and entrepreneurial characteristics, opportunities of leadership and networking provided through the agricultural, business, and community organizations to which the women belonged. The author developed and administered a questionnaire to over 1,000 statistically-selected individuals from three national agricultural women's organizations. The basic design of this unique study was to explore the literature from both a historical and a contemporary perspective on entrepreneurship, on women as entrepreneurs, and on farm women, and then gather primary data from a national survey of farm women. This study compares the characteristics of farm women with non-farm women entrepreneurs. Based on the findings, recommendations are made to policymakers and economic development specialists with interest in entrepreneurship, revitalization of rural America, and women's studies. Historical information is presented on women's organizations, their leaders, and the impact of these organizations; and major federal legislation impacting women and women business owners is provided in the appendices.