Life in the American Colonies

The Way People Live

by Ruth Dean, Melissa Thomson

Discusses the day-to-day aspects of country and city life in the American colonies for a variety of people including members of different professions, specific immigrant groups, and slaves.

Genres: History

96 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1998

Reviews

[Jerry Jares]

This copy I purchased was a withdrawn copy from a local middle school library. The cover and pages were pristine and now I know why. This is the most turgid rendering of American colonial history I've read in years. It is truly sad.

I wanted to use the knowledge gleaned from this thin volume to flesh-out the genealogy of some of my ancestors; genealogy with just a catalog of dates is of limited value, in my estimation. I wanted to make my ancestors (who came before the American Revolution) come alive in the book I'm writing.

It took more than six weeks of agonized reading to get through this (less than 100 page) tome. The saving grace could have been the illustrations. The images were good by-and-of-themselves, but there were surely better choices. For example: Who really needs to see (yet again) the illustration of Benjamin Franklin doing his experiment with electricity using a key and kite during an electrical storm?

In the end, I walked away with maybe 5 interesting facts that I can use for my genealogy story of colonial America.

[Hannah]

Wayyyy too much information

[Tammy]

I enjoyed learning more about the colonies. My interest was sparked by the Netflix series "Outlander."

[Danielle]

Not the knitty-gritty details, but for just 84 pages it did a very good job of discussing the broader aspects of what life was like in the colonies.

[1 Kirk 0_0 Kirk]

This was interesting and it helps me in history.