Stowe wrote over 30 books. This one is a fascinating collection of her post Civil War musings on a variety of cultural topics, staged mostly as conversations between Christopher Crowfield (Stowe's masculine nome de plume), and his wife, their son Ben, daughter Jenny, their friends, and various neighbors who drop in to chat around the fireside. Lively topics include women's suffrage & their education, entertainment, fashion, the economy during reconstruction, youth entertainment, and how society and its institutions should prepare young women for useful, meaningful lives besides getting married or simply depending on other family members to support them while they do little or nothing, or worse, fall into a street life. She reflects on the economic after-effects of the Civil War, and the struggle to create a more civilized nation. ( ~ Michele Fry)