Boxer finds that "the mere survival of these Christian minorities through the vicissitudes of over three centuries is a tribute to the work of the dedicated missionaries of the Church Militant in times past."
The material lives of rural upcountry women improved dramatically by midcentury-yet in becoming middle class, Walker concludes, the women found their experiences both broadened and circumscribed.
Additional essays discuss race and gender in colonial as well as modern America, the new paradigms of urban history, religious history, visual culture, public history, the new narrative history, and the meanings of national culture.