Customer Reviews

Everyday Life in Colonial America (Writer's Guides to Everyday Life)

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The Writer's Guide series is intended to "syntheize the many facts available into concepts that help you understand the period without excessive study," to quote the author's introduction, and in that this volume of it succeeds well. Of course, in a book of this size, such a large number of subjects can only be covered in a fairly superficial manner, but the extensive bibliographies do help by providing pointers to other useful works. And since social histories always tend to be thinner on the ground than mainstream ones (battles and kings and Parliaments), any comprehensive book on the subject is welcome.

The book starts out with a general timeline, then offers a regional overview of the major developments and occurrences in each of four major regions, and goes on to touch on everyday life (food and drink, architecture, clothing and accessories, marriage and family), government and war (including "money, economy, trade, travel, and navigation"), and Colonial society (arts and sciences, trades, professions, religion). Period terms and unusual colloquialisms are emphasized by a special typeface. Though the illustrations are relatively few, they are clear and well-chosen, and there are several sidebars showing such things as weights and measures and the sequences of commands used in artillery and in matchlock-rifle companies. It may simply be because I don't often have occasion to look into social histories of this era (my period is more likely to be 1840-90), but I found that this one provided me with quite a lot of useful information. Writers and casual students alike should be able to say the same.

It's a handy book to begin research on the 13 American colonies that became the U.S.A. It breaks down colonial life by activity and there are what looks like nice sized bibliographies. But this book is too small to cover such a vast area and time period.

Life in the Northern New England region was different than life in the South. Life in the coastal areas was different than life in Pennsylvania or Georgia. Colonial life in the 1600's was different from that in the late 1700's because in the 1600's European settlement (English/French anyway) was just beginning while in 1770's the colonies were self sufficient enough to successfully rebel against England and spread westward. There are ethnic differences. French settlements were not constructed like English Settlements and English were not like Spanish. (and those are only the 3 big European colonizers of North America).

2)"Colonial America" should include the colonies that did not become the United States as well as those that did. Many of Louisiana's founding families were those expelled from Acadia/New France by the British conquest of Quebec and Nova Scotia. So, Nouvelle France and Acadian colonies should be discussed and although I understand a book about American colonies written by an American would espouse the Republican side of the American Revolution, the views of those who in Canada are called the Loyalists should be mentioned, since they were as much members of your communities as those who were Patriots.

Of course all this would make a huge book and not cover everything it promises to in its title. Writer's Digest should've made many smaller books in their Everyday Life series to cover the subject better - but it's something.

This book is a well researched and organized overview of life in the early American colonies. Taylor goes to great pains to supply insights into government and family matters of, and the trades and professions of 17th and 18th century settlers. Intended as a sourcebook for writers, it is also a must for the history student who wishes to better understand American colonists.

The title sums it up pretty much. What was there was good but some of it seemed a little generalized. Like the part about infantry as an example. It says that early (in this case from 1607 to 1675) the main weapon was the pike, but this is not really true. It was more 2/3 musketeers and 1/3 pikemen. In fact by 1676 (king philips war) no army really used pikes since the tactic didn't work well against natives. The book is full of things like this, he could have put a bit more research in.

This is a good beginner sourcebook if you are interested in the New England area of what would become the United States. Good bibliography and good overview in text. But since it covers more than 200 years, and tries to cover European settlement life in the whole of the future USA it must fall short, so don't use it as your only source. It does not cover any part of what would later become Canada, and since both nations were part of British/French "Colonial America" it falls short there too. So, buy it for the bibliography.

This book is useful in that it provides a lot of information not found elsewhere, but the writing is poor. Many times I had to stop myself and re-read a sentence.

Written mostly for writers I find this book so broad it is useless. There is very little about the details of everyday life and though I long for these details, there so little of use here that I wish I hadn't spent the money for this book. There are other overviews of the period much better.