Masterful Women

“Well-written and painstakingly researched. . . . As a study of slaveholding widows in the antebellum South, Masterful Women is a very important contribution to the field.” — Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

“A positive contribution to women’s and Southern history for demonstrating the complexity between the reality of female lives and the rhetoric of prescriptive literature.” — Florida Historical Quarterly

“A welcome and comprehensive addition to the scholarship about southern women. Well researched and thoughtful, this book provides a long overdue examination of white slaveholding widows, their special version of mastery, their relationships to family and to others, and their actions and experiences as slaveholders. . . . Smart, commendable, interesting, and important.” — Georgia Historical Quarterly

“[A] fine book. . . . Nicely written and peopled with memorable . . . characters, this book is an important contribution to the literature on women, gender, and plantation society in the Old South.” — North Carolina Historical Review

“[An] interesting and much-needed study of slaveholding widows. . . . A must read for students of comparative New World slave systems.” — Journal of American History

“General readers seeking a concise view of the Alamo and its role in the Texas Revolution will find this a good place to start.” — Journal of Southern History

“A lively read for Civil War aficionados, history buffs, and anybody interested in quirky stories.” — Miami Herald

“In this engaging study of southern society, Wood further explodes the thesis that elite southern women remained in the private sphere, only reluctantly assuming authority during the Civil War.” — CHOICE

“Masterful Women is a welcome addition to studies of women, gender, slave-holding and the Civil War in the American South. Wood’s analysis is consistently multi-layered, yet concise. . . . Wood has produced a masterful account of the varied, and sometimes contradictory, ways that slaveholding widows exercised agency in a southern economy that, while stressing race and sex subjugation, also proved malleable regarding white women’s gender roles.” — Civil War History

“Wood offers a wonderfully rich and revealing reading of slaveholding widows' particular kind of mastery over a long period of southern history. Masterful Women makes an important contribution to the literature on women, gender, and slaveholding society in the American South.” — Stephanie McCurry, University of Pennsylvania