Barbara H. Stein

"[3] Born Barbara Hadley to a New England family that traces its roots back to the seventeenth century, she attended pre-college schools that shaped her wide perspective on the world.

She entered Smith College and studied with Vera Brown Holmes, a scholar of Latin America and Iberian who had been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1931.

[5] She had a variety of life experiences that shaped her scholarly interest on power relations included teaching school in rural Michoacan, Mexico, working in a California cannery, working as a census taker in California for the 1940 census, and as a labor economist in the U.S. Department of Labor and Nelson Rockefeller’s Office of Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, in Washington, D.C.

Historian Vincent Peloso says of this work, "It is fair to say that no one who studied Latin American history over the last 35 years would have failed to engage the slim, elegantly written synthesis.

"[6] Following this work, the couple's research resulted in three major academic publications: Silver, trade, and war: Spain and America in the Making of Early Modern Europe.