The Riddle of Amish Culture (Center Books in Anabaptist Studies)
by Donald B. Kraybill
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Read in January, 2003
Kraybill knows his topic. He's a prof. at Messiah College, a top-drawer evangelial school with Anabaptist/Brethren roots, located near PA Amish country. He has studied and written on the Amish since the mid-80s. He is also a clear communicator, able to summarize complicated material with ease.
He is clearly very sympathetic to most of the Amish distinctives, though he is able to maintain a critical stance.
To me the Amish are more than simply a curious cultural oddity. They offer some in...more
He is clearly very sympathetic to most of the Amish distinctives, though he is able to maintain a critical stance.
To me the Amish are more than simply a curious cultural oddity. They offer some in...more
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Read in May, 2002
recommends it for:
Anyone interested in the Amish
I found this book at a political science conference, and it looked interesting, so I grabbed it for fun reading. It's one of the best ethnographic studies I have ever read, and I learned a lot about the subtleties of the Amish way of life, and why the Amish avoid, in many cases, electricity, phones, motorized equipment, and the like. But the Amish are not the cute tourist props most people seem to think they are--their culture is rich, complex, and worthy of knowing more about.
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I went through a season of being super impressed with the Amish culture. This book helped me understand the way of life better. It is a basic understanding of the movement, and spurned me on to study more of the American utopian experiment communities such as the Shakers, and Zoar Village etc.
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nonfiction
Read in January, 2006
Purchased in Lancaster County, PA. VERY thorough, sometimes a bit wordy. I was fascinated when I was visiting there and wanted to learn more, and this was definitely a good guide to various aspects of Amish life, but was a bit "textbooky" for my taste.
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