Colonial Women: 23 Europeans Who Helped Build a Nation

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book, read it and then give it to your daughter
Review: This is a very good book concerning 23 different women who lived during the 1600's and 1700's. Some of these most of us have heard of before (such as Anne Hutchinson or Margaret Winthrop), but some of them are more obscure. In any case, each woman is given a short biography of from 5 to 12 pages. While sometimes the writing is a little jumpy from one place in history to another, this would be difficult to be otherwise as the author is covering the entire life of each subject in several pages. However, the writing is well done and entertaining and generally flows along smoothly. The author not only covers the individual, but also relates what is going on at the time and the conditions under which the person lived.
The author packs a lot of history into these short biographies. Not only that, one picks up interesting tid-bits such as why "quarter-horses" are called quarter-horses.
Several of these women have entire books written about them, and the author gives a bibliography after each biography (don't get those two woods confused!), so those interested in further reading have a source of material.
This book may be especially interesting to girls as most history tends to only enlighten us upon what the men were doing. Also, while this book is written in an easy-to-read manner that younger people would find readable, it is not written so that an adult would find it silly (I'm 42 and I think the author hit the hard-to-find target of making the book enjoyable for both children and adults--well done author).
Well-written, informative and entertaining, and all the while it teaches us history besides. A winner.