DOING WHAT THE DAY BROUGHT: An Oral...

DOING WHAT THE DAY BROUGHT: An Oral History of Arizona Women by Mary Logan Rothschild and Pamela Claire Hronek (University of Arizona Press: $16.95, illustrated). The “Lives” project was designed to document the experiences of women in Arizona, especially minority women, who saw their lives as an ordinary daily existence, no different from that of the neighbors. Their recollections of the pleasures and trials of life in an unforgiving desert environment unconsciously trace the development of Arizona from a frontier territory to a booming Sun Belt state. By contemporary standards, these women were isolated and poorly educated, condemned to lives of childbearing and toil as they struggled to provide for their families. Yet they express few regrets, and seem to derive a satisfaction from their labors that their leisured descendants can only envy.