Indian, European, and African women of seventeenth and eighteenth-century America were defenders of their native land, pioneers on the frontier, willing immigrants, and courageous slaves. They were also - as traditional scholarship tends to omit - as important as men in shaping American culture and history. This remarkable work is a gripping portrait that gives early-American women their proper place in history.
"A revision, amplification, and synthesis of a rich succession of studies about every aspect of colonial society and culture. [Berkin] brings her subject down to earth . . . and shows sensitivity to the experiences of individual women . . . [First Generations] offers what Mary Beth Norton [author of Founding Mothers and Fathers] rightly calls 'the best available introduction to the lives of women in colonial and revolutionary America.'"
