| | Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 |  | Author: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Creator: J. Laslocky
Publisher: Topeka Bindery
Category: Book
This item is no longer available
Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 1688097
Format: Import
Number Of Items: 1
ISBN: 1417718528
EAN: 9781417718528
Publication Date: January 1990
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 The delight is in the detail May 29, 2008
This is one of the best history books ever written: I first read it about ten years ago when I lived in the States and I've lost count of the times I've dipped back into it since. It's both a wonderful work of scholarship (Ulrich can tell us exactly who's who in Martha's world) and an engaging, well-written story. It also shows, in these days of medicalised childbirth, just how effective a good midwife can be: Martha's stillbirth and neonatal deathrate of about 4% is high by modern standards, but she delivered twins and breeches, had no forceps, no antibiotics, and no recourse to c-section. It's not just about midwifery, though: it's also a social history of a particular society at a particular time, almost an anthropology of the past.
If you're interested in women's lives in other cultures, or in life at the turn of the nineteenth century, or pregnancy and parturition, give this a go. You'll make the acquaintance of a fascinating woman.
Inspired me to major in history in college. May 16, 1999
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Ulrich's book provides a fecundity of specifics to a genre destined to be overgeneralized. Her excruciatingly detailed research and beautiful writing together create a book which both explores an individual biography and illuminates women's history in the period. The depth of her look at one woman in a single town inspired me to do my own local history research using women's diaries. For anyone interest in women, American history or the techniques of social history this book is a must-read.
This is one of the most interesting nonfictions available. April 28, 1999
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I had to read this book for World Civilizations II and it was definitely worth it. This book shows a new approach to defining past cultures. Ulrich does a fantastic job of pointing out the important facts and letting the not-so-important facts rest.
Martha was fantastic! March 9, 1999
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Martha Moore Ballard is my great x5 grandmother, to read the book and to view the movie was very moving to me. I am also in the medical field. I am a descendant of her son Jon. I attended the movie with other ancestors of Martha and we all enjoyed it. The book shows life was not easy for a pioneer woman.
a moving account of a woman's life March 4, 1999
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Ulrich's book is a moving account in an underexplored area of American History--the lives and economies of early American women. This book is a double triumph--Martha Ballard kept a detailed diary for almost three decades and Ulrich rescued the dairy from oblivion to create a luminous work of scholarship. This book was moving and engaging beyond almost any work of history I have ever read. Nothing else I have ever read has given me a better feeling of what it would be like to live as a woman in those days. What a triumph!
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