A Very Social Time: Crafting Community in Antebellum New England

Karen Hansen's richly anecdotal narrative explores the textured community lives of New England's working women and men—both white and black—n the half century before the Civil War. Her use of diaries, letters, and autobiographies brings their voices to life, making this study an extraordinary combination of historical research and sociological interpretation.

Hansen challenges conventional notions that women were largely relegated to a private realm and men to a public one. A third dimension...