| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Childhood on the Farm: Work, Play, and Coming of Age in the Midwest. By Pamela Riney- Kehrberg. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005. xii, 300 pp. $34.95, ISBN 0-7006-1388-9.)

Calling This Place Home: Women on the Wisconsin Frontier, 1850–1925. By Joan M. Jensen. (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2006. xvi, 518 pp. $34.95, ISBN 978-0-87351-563-4.)

In some important ways, these two studies are similar. Both examine life in rural society in the American Midwest during an era that ends around 1920 with the rise of urbanization in the United States. In order to draw a picture of their respective subject matter, the authors draw extensively on large bodies of diverse material: family stories, scholarly studies, memoirs, photographs, letters, government records, legal documents, the archives of public institutions and historical societies, and even literary works. Both tell many individual stories, drawn from their various sources, to illustrate their arguments and their conclusions, while also acknowledging the diversity of women's and children's experiences. They are well-written, well-documented, balanced, and engaging works that make important contributions to our knowledge about life at that time and place for those whose experiences often went unrecorded: women, children, and the poor.

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