Julie Roy Jeffrey's absolutly magnificent book is must reading for anyone interested in aboltionism and the American Civil War. Jeffrey not only writes an excellent history of aboltionism and women's role in that movement, but she explains, very convincingly, why northern whites eventually would eventually support Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation.

Jeffrey describes how abolitionism in the north in the 1850's became "normalized" within many communities. In other words, the idea of freeing the slaves by 1860 was not some crazy idea. It was something that people had been exposed to for years. Jeffrey argues that this is largely because of women.

This book is one of the most important works on the war to be published in years. Anyone who thinks they understand the war without reading it is simply fooling themselves. This book has my highest recomendation.

Julie Roy Jeffrey's achievement is a must for anyone interested in the history of the American frontier. It tells the tragic tale of a clash between two incompatible cultures and consequently highlights the complexity of the frontier experience. Here all notions of European conquest or Native American savagery are replaced by a reality of failed coexistence.

It was informative. I felt like there was too much about certain topics. I did enjoy reading it.

This book was horrible. I was forced to use it in a mandatory brainwash...er, history course for school. The book essentially goes like this:

We settled Massachusetts, and the indians, blacks, gays and women were persecuted.

Then, we started a westward expansion which led to persecution for indians, blacks, gays, and women.

During the revolutionary war some white guys fought or something, but it is important to note that the indians, blacks, gays...

This book is a proselyting tool, a transparent piece of propaganda. I didn't convert.

This book tries to teach history without actually including any concrete information. It outlines general trends without emphasizing the historical facts on which the trends are based. While it's certainly important to recognize progressions in history, it's extremely difficult to learn about them based only on the text's vague, 50-page summaries, all of which fail to mention any form of historical evidence.

As a student, I found this book's approach to teaching history disastrous and mildly insulting. First of all, it fails to convey even the most cursory knowledge of history by shunning, at all costs, cruel Old Regime teaching methods that might require DATE memorization or familiarity with historical FACTS. With nothing to "Lock On" to, it's very hard to retain anything. Even worse, however, are the implications of the book's approach. I like History because I enjoy being able to look at a set of evidence and trying to figure out, based on otherwise stale information, what *actually* happened, what life was like. Somehow, I got the sense that by describing outright "what life was like," the book implies that to force students to learn INFORMATION is useless, that students are unable to think for themselves and interpret historical information with any accuracy.

I think I should comment, also, on one reviewer's dismissal of this book as "Nouveau History." I come close to BEING one of the "Tenured Radicals" this reviewer had so much disdain for, and I still hated this book. I would hate it if I were communist. There's so much wrong with it that to criticize it for its left-wing perspective is plain silly.

I would recommend "The American Promise," by James L. Rourke, Micheal P. Johnson, and a few others instead.

This book provides a balanced overview of U.S. History up to 1877. The treatment of social and cultural history is particularly stong. The prose is, for the most part, quite lively.