Resumo de A Midwife Tale - Ulrich, Lawrel Thatcher

A Midwife?s Tale
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's A Midwife's Tale is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Joan Kelly and John H. Dunning Prizes of the American Historical Association. The format of the book was very interesting. At the beginning of each chapter are actual diary entries of Martha Ballard, and after the diary entries, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich writes about Martha Ballard and her town. It is like a biography and an autobiography rolled up in one. Martha Ballard is a healer and midwife who lived in Hallowell, Maine. Her diary entries tell about her daily life, including her work as a medical practitioner, her relationship with her husband, and her point-of-view about politics, court cases, and events that happen around her. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich covers every aspect of Martha's life with detailed descriptions. The book goes beyond Martha Ballard's diary. A Midwife's Tale also tells about Hallowell, too. The author has done a lot of research, and facts about the town were bountiful. A Midwife's Tale is a fascinating book that unravels a lot. I would definitely recommend it to anyone that is interested in reading about women's history

Biography
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is Phillips Professor of Early American History at Harvard University. Formerly a professor of American history at the University of New Hampshire, she is the author of Good Wives (1982) and numerous articles and essays on early American history. She won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1991 for A Midwife?s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785--1812. Born and raised in the Rocky Mountain West, she has lived in New England since 1960. During her tenure as a MacArthur Fellow, she assisted in the production of a PBS documentary based on A Midwife?s Tale. Her work is also featured on an award-winning Web site called dohistory.org. She and her husband, Gael Ulrich, are the parents of five grown children

Why did you write this book?

LTU: There were lots of reasons, but the biggest one I think is that I wanted to see if I could use a different kind of source. In A Midwife's Tale, I had the joy of being able to penetrate a seemingly opaque diary, and I thought it would be challenging to see if I could learn to read something even more difficult--eighteenth-century cloth

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