In the preface, Faust wonders if after years of acadmic writing she will be able to produce a work for other audiences. The answer is no. She manages to take interesting information and compelling quotes from original sources and kill their effect with the dizzyingly dull conventions of academic-speak. I gave this book two stars instead of one because after taking aspirin for the headache it induced, I had to admit that I had learned something, even if it was only a few broad generalities. The book also will serve as a location guide for her original source material, so there is a little value in that, too. Hence, two stars.

We so often think of the violence and suffering on the battle fields during the Civil War, we neglect to think of the women of the South who did suffer too. While you may find these 500 women a bit misguided in their beliefs, the reader can see the evolution and sometimes the devolution of these women as the letters go deeper into the war. Women who once lived a priviledged lives are confronting the fact that they do not know how to provide breakfast for their families, a chore their now disappeared slaves performed daily. Questions of the existance of God, whose side is he on arise. Ideas of White racial supremacy is forgotten when these women write their letters of pain while wearing dresses made of old furniture fabric.

The tales of women in the slaveholding south are told in Faust's Mothers of Invention. The insecurities, fears and hopes of the southern women are brought to light and the book gives a behind the scenes look at the Civil War. Instead of the usual "on the surface" view Faust shows the real feelings and events that women deal with when their men are sent to battle. The reader is left with strong feelings, both good and bad, about Civil War era society and but most importantly a glimpse into history through primary source documents. Another good book for the classroom!

Drew Gilpin Faust strings together the letters and diaries of 500 Southern women to tell their story during the Civil War. At a period in history when women's lives were somewhat overlooked, Faust allows these women to have their voices heard. Through these letters and diaries readers are able to understand the viewpoints and opinions from women at the time. Faust does a great job of letting the women speak through their own writing and throughout the book readers can see how the opinions on the war are not the same for every woman. I would absolutely use this book as a tool to gain insight into the heads of women at a time when their husbands, sons and brothers were fighting and dying in a war that some women did not even agree with. Faust is very descriptive and has great sources in the book. Definitely worth it!

Mothers of Invention is a book by Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust (historian), who was appointed President of Harvard University in February 2007. This book is an excellent adjunct to any college level class on the Civil War period. Faust researched the letters, diaries and journals of 500 elite southern white women, to determine the impact of the Civil War on them and their families. Her research shows how they were affected by the war, as well as how they impacted the attitudes of their men, particularly the soldiers. It also discusses the positive and negative aspects of how they affected the Confederate States of America.

You should read this book both for its new contributions to the history of the Civil War, as well as the unique revelations. Even though most Confederate women were supportive of the Civil War when it started, this book shows that pre-war elites had been placed on so high a pedestal that they were totally unprepared to do even routine things, such as cooking and sewing. When the slave masters and overseers left the plantation for the battlefield, the elites were abandoned to run large plantations, utilizing slaves who were, at best, apathetic towards their leadership, and at worst, openly rebellious. As the war continued, the situation of the women worsened because of deaths, food and clothing shortages, inflation, runaway and recalitrant slaves, and Yankee incursions into the South. After four years of war, the elite women came to hate the war as much as the soldiers who fought and died in large numbers.

Once you read this outstanding book, you will understand how poorly prepared the South was to fight a Civil War that lasted more than a year. You will understand why elite southern white women grew to hate this war, that changed the lives of women forever. Women learned that they were capable of doing jobs from which they had previously been excluded. The only problem with this book is that makes you want to do even more research into related issues.

Faust does not try to hide her sympathy for these women or admiration for those who were resourceful, nor does she pull any punches in revealing their selfishness. The point of the book, however, was not to solicit sympathy for upper class white women, but to illuminate their influence on the outcome of the war and on the mind of the south as it evolved after the war. The ladies deserve much of the credit--and blame--for the "lost cause" mentality that holds sway with many Southerners still today. For that insight alone we owe a great debt to Drew Gilpin Faust.

Mothers of Invention is a very academic analysis of the impact of the civil war on the notions of role and gender long held by the upper class women of the old south. It rocked their world, that's for sure and it sounds as if they surely needed it. It is based on the contents of letters and diaries written by elite aristocratic women whose biggest concern about the war was that they were unable to attend social functions or obtain silk and satin for their dresses. Or that their husbands would die and not come back and restore their former way of life.

The subject of this book is a single class of women - rich, white, spoiled and utterly despicible. These women complainted bitterly of how the war effected their miserable self centered lives with little concern about the effects the war had on those who fought it and what they were experiencing. The war meant little more to them than a threat to their way of life.

Ms. Faust tries to portray her subjects as victims and prisoners of their circumstances but these women were anything but. They embraced the supposed chains that bound them and had little concern for the profound and widespread pain and suffering caused for millions of others as a result of the war they so glamorized and romanticized.

This book is rather tedious if you are not a fan nor speaker of that odd language known as academia (why in the world does she include long diary and letter passages in French?) But it has some very good moments and will give the reader new insight into how truly horrid those magnolia queens really were. Not even a feminist writer sympathetic to anything in petticoats can hide that fact; as much as she tries.

The first thing to know when you pick up this book, is that first, it deals basically only with diaries and letters, and that probably only a woman interested in the history of women would be interested. The entire book is very...well, womanly. I did enjoy what I learned about Southern women (and believe me, it is ONLY slaveholding woman, as the title suggests), but I couldn't help but ask why Faust did not ever mention anybody over the age of about 30. If they don't have any records of any diaries of older women, she should have said so, because I was wondering about it the entire time. Basically it only covers how women felt about their husbands being gone (wanting protection, resorting to writing as comfort, scared about slave uprisings, etc) but hardly anything was said about SONS being gone. Where were they? And only a little bit more was said about fathers being gone. Over all, I did learn about women during the Civil War from the South, but only a very small portion of them. I would probably only recommend this book as an asset to research about women in the 19th century, or to anyone who wonders what else was going on in the country apart from the war.

Reading this book, I got the impression that the author buys into the impression most people have of pre-war Southern women - the vapid Southern belle who basically did nothing until the war began, then suddenly she had to run the plantation. Not true! If one reads diaries and letters of the period, the daily running of the home was left to the women - managing the slaves (if the family owned any). Women handled a good deal more of the marketing and financial running of farms, especially, than is generally believed. Perhaps women weren't involved in politics, but the backbone of southern life was the home and that was the woman's province. Women proved their capability before and during the war by managing the homefront. As for refugees - the tales told by thousands of women who were forced to flee their homes are far in excess of the numbers suggested by the author. The worst atrocity of the war - the hundreds of women captured by the Union in Roswell, Georgia - is ignored. The author also suggests that support for the war by southern women waned as it went on, another questionable fact in light of the many diaries of the period and the tremendous outpouring of grief at the surrender. Most women couldn't bear to record the end of the Confederacy in their diaries and surviving letters are filled with bitterness. Still, this book is an excellent researcher. Also recommend Juanita Leisch's books on "Civil War Civilians" and "Who Wore What" although her fashion research should be taken with a grain of salt as it is theory only based on a sampling of period photos.

In "Mothers of Invention," Drew Gilpin Faust explores the ways in which the Civil War transformed traditional gender roles among middle- and upper-class southern women. Gilpin theorizes that Confederate women certainly were aware of the effect that government policies had on their lives-even if the leaders, at times, were not-and that women's views conscription, home defense, economic production and slavery influenced and, ultimately, undermined their support for the war.

Her key point seems to be that the war overturned the "social contract" in which elite women accepted subordination and dependence for male protection and privilege. Although men were off protecting their homes in the abstract sense, women were left to deal with the day-to-day realities of food shortages and an invading army occupying their homes.

Narrowing exceptions to the draft, the military's refusals to grant furloughs in times of great family need, and government policies regarding food requisitions especially galled women. Faust puts a particularly interesting gender perspective on the draft exemption for those owning 20+ slaves. Normally, this exemption is viewed solely in class terms: "Rich man's war, poor man's fight." Faust, however, brings attention to the fear that white women experienced being left alone to manage large slave populations without a man's help. Women feared murder and uprisings from a slave population that was growing increasingly rebellious. The priority ultimately given to equitably treating draft-age white men and the burden of managing slaves led to a decline in women's support for the slave system and for the Confederacy, she argues.

In addition to slave management, Faust explores other ways in which the war caused elite white women to step into traditional male roles. From the very beginning, secession and the war led to much greater involvement by women in the public sphere. Although politics had been considered the province of men, secession was a topic that no one could stop discussing-women included. The banding together of women to support the war effort also proved a new experience for southern women. Unlike their northern sisters, southern women typically had not been involved in social organizations before the war.

Faust's book includes a fascinating discussion about attitudes toward the refugee experience. In particular, she notes that becoming a refugee was the civilian equivalent of buying a substitute for the draft. A refugee, the term implied, had the money and connections to make a planned departure from home-often to protect property. In support of this view, she cites the diary of Mary Lee of Winchester, who disdained the term refugee in favor of "displaced person" to describe those fleeing with little in the face of the enemy.

"Mothers of Invention" contains one of the most interesting analyses of the hoop skirt that I have seen. Faust notes that the trend for full skirts, ultimately supported by hoops, coincided with the Victorian ideals of domesticity and women's separate sphere. The caged crinoline or hoop offered women a portable enclosed private space and the wide skirts symbolized a circle in which women were protected. In an era where upper-class women's sexuality was repressed, the style also hid and reformed female anatomy. The conspicuous consumption of fabric and the difficulty performing physical labor in these skirts made a class statement as well.

"Mothers of Invention" provides a good overview of the different ways that the war affected southern women's lives, including changes within the household, relations between husbands and wives, paid employment outside the home, the likelihood that young women would remain single due to the deaths of so many young men, religious views on the war, increased educational opportunities for women, dealing with Yankee men, etc. Her accessible writing style and use of interesting quotes and numerous pictures make this a relatively quick read. The book is well-organized with subheadings that make locating important points quite easy.

For those interested in exploring the southern woman's war experience, this book would be a good starting point for gaining some good general knowledge. Readers should keep in mind, however, that Faust is focusing on elite and middle-class women, and that the experiences and attitudes she describes do not reflect the lives of lower-class women.

The subject matter is hard to find a book on, much less a good read, thus this book is a rarity, and it is very very well done.

It's a very trustworthy read with no opinionated ego trips and an amazing amount of information. Drew Faust is the queen of primary sources. Everything you read by her is straight from an original. She truly does her research, then puts it in a form that is a delightful and captivating read. I found "Mother of Invention" to not only be incredibly informative (you'll learn quite a bit in one sentence) but and outstanding book that I vied to pick up even more than a novel.

There's something incredibly satisfying in reading a research book and actually really remembering it because you liked it.

Historically, Southern women have been type-case as fragile, codependent, incapable, overgrown children. Growing up in the South, it was always difficult to find role models from local history, or in the mass media.

"Mothers of Invention" shows us otherwise. It was amazing and inspiring to read about the struggles and revelations of these women. It touched me deeply, to think about the courage and strength it took for a previously sheltered woman to learn to take on more responsibility in a society that told her that her place was at home.

This book shows Southern women as gutsy and brave, a little like Scarlett O'Hara's spirit when she vowed, "I'll never be hungry again!"