{"title":"Pennsylvania German History And Culture","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"horse-and-buggy-mennonites-book-donald-b-kraybill-9780271028668","title":"Horse-and-Buggy Mennonites","description":"On a May Sunday in 1927, progress and tradition collided at the Groffdale Old Order Mennonite Church in eastern Pennsylvania when half the congregation shunned the cup of wine offered by Bishop Moses Horning. The boycott of this holiest of Mennonite customs was in direct response to Horning’s decision to endorse the automobile after years of debate within the church. The resulting schism over opposing views of technology produced the group known as the Wenger Mennonites.   In the nearly eighty years since the establishment of this church, the initial group of fifty dissenters has grown to a community of 16,000 Wenger Mennonites. They have large families and typically retain 95 percent or more of their youth. For many years their main community was based in Lancaster County, but in recent decades they have expanded into eight other states, with new communities most recently established in Iowa and Michigan. Despite their continued rejection of modern technology, the Wengers—popularly known as horse-and-buggy Mennonites—continue to thrive on their own terms.  In this first-of-its-kind study of the Wenger Mennonites, Kraybill and Hurd—a sociologist and an anthropologist—use cultural analysis to interpret the Wengers both in and outside Pennsylvania. They systematically compare the Wengers with other Mennonite groups as well as with the Amish, showing how relationships with these other groups have had a powerful impact on shaping the identity of the Wenger Mennonites in the Anabaptist world. As Kraybill and Hurd show, the Wengers have learned that it is impossible to maintain a truly static culture, and so examining the ways in which the Wengers cautiously and incrementally adapt to the ever-changing world around them is an invaluable case study of the gradual evolution of religious ritual in the face of modernity.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49959584203025,"sku":"CIN0271028661G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51726971765009,"sku":"CIN0271028661VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0271028661.jpg?v=1751101745"},{"product_id":"plain-women-book-margaret-c-reynolds-9780271021386","title":"Plain Women","description":"Despite the great interest in \"plain\" groups in recent years, comparatively little has been written about women and the particular role they play in preserving traditional religious and cultural values in the modern world. In Plain Women, Margaret C. Reynolds portrays the women of the Old Order River Brethren, a significant branch of the Brethren in Christ located mainly in Pennsylvania.   The members of this conservative offshoot of the Brethren are often confused with the Amish because of their plain attire, but, unlike the Amish, they have made some notable concessions to the modern world—including the use of automobiles, computers, and home appliances. Noting these accommodations to modern American life, Reynolds examines the ceremonies and traditions that allow the Old Order River Brethren to remain \"separate\" from other plain groups and from contemporary mass culture. She describes, for example, the love feast communion, a service that involves footwashing and a breadmaking ritual (one unique to the Old Order River Brethren and solely performed by women). Reynolds focuses in particular on the gendered customs of dress, hair, and domesticity that shape women’s lives and, in so doing, preserve the minority faith itself.   Plain Women is the first volume in the new Pennsylvania German History and Culture Series, published in cooperation with the Pennsylvania German Society. This series is a continuation of the Society’s annual volumes on Pennsylvania German scholarship in disciplines such as history, religion, folklore, literature, and arts.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50038741762321,"sku":"CIN0271021381VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50276875108625,"sku":"CIN0271021381G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0271021381.jpg?v=1751038458"},{"product_id":"foreigners-in-their-own-land-book-steven-m-nolt-9780271034447","title":"Foreigners in Their Own Land","description":"Historians of the early Republic are just beginning to tell the stories of the period’s ethnic minorities. In Foreigners in Their Own Land, Steven M. Nolt is the first to add the story of the Pennsylvania Germans to that larger mosaic, showing how they came to think of themselves as quintessential Americans and simultaneously constructed a durable sense of ethnicity. The Lutheran and Reformed Pennsylvania German populations of eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the Appalachian backcountry successfully combined elements of their Old World tradition with several emerging versions of national identity. Many took up democratic populist rhetoric to defend local cultural particularity and ethnic separatism. Others wedded certain American notions of reform and national purpose to Continental traditions of clerical authority and idealized German virtues. Their experience illustrates how creating and defending an ethnic identity can itself be a way of becoming American. Though they would maintain a remarkably stable and identifiable subculture well into the twentieth century, Pennsylvania Germans were, even by the eve of the Civil War, the most \"inside\" of \"outsiders.\" They represent the complex and often paradoxical ways in which many Americans have managed the process of assimilation to their own advantage. Given their pioneering role in that process, their story illuminates the path that other immigrants and ethnic Americans would travel in the decades to follow.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50224661889297,"sku":"CIN0271034440G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53181225599249,"sku":"NLS9780271034447","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0271034440.jpg?v=1751356056"},{"product_id":"to-the-latest-posterity-book-corinne-earnest-9780271023687","title":"To the Latest Posterity","description":"The family register holds a distinctive place in American visual culture. Used to record marriages and offspring within a family through several generations, the family register also incorporates hand-illuminated decorative art. To the Latest Posterity is the first major study to explore the colorful world of Pennsylvania German family registers and their place in American social, religious, and cultural traditions.  Renowned authorities on fraktur, Russell and Corinne Earnest trace the evolution of decorative family registers from their roots in medieval European illuminated manuscripts to their distinctly American forms that spread through Pennsylvania German culture. The form had a special association with persecuted Mennonites, who used the decorative documents to claim roots in their new home. The documents came to represent the separation from the Old World and the creation of family roots in the New. To the Latest Posterity is filled with examples of family registers from museums and private collections, including early handmade work as well as printed registers that were hand-filled in the nineteenth century. Bringing the art to the twentieth century, the Earnests discuss the adoption of the art by Amish, who continue the practice of illuminated family record-keeping today.     Pennsylvania German History and Culture Series","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50346453008657,"sku":"CIN0271023686G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50859609260305,"sku":"CIN0271023686VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0271023686.jpg?v=1750738173"},{"product_id":"architecture-and-artifacts-of-the-pennsylvania-germans-book-cynthia-g-falk-9780271033389","title":"Architecture and Artifacts of the Pennsylvania Germans","description":"Explores the relationship between ethnicity and the buildings, personal belongings, and other cultural artifacts of early Pennsylvania German immigrants and descendants. This title demonstrates that more than anything, socioeconomic status and religious affiliation influenced the character of the material culture of Pennsylvania Germans.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50478648000785,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50478648328465,"sku":"CIN027103338XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/027103338X.jpg?v=1750973573"},{"product_id":"heart-language-book-susan-colestock-hill-9780271035437","title":"Heart Language","description":"At the turn of the twentieth century, American popular literary magazines and journals pulsed with local-color fiction, seeking to satisfy a national hunger for American identity. Anxiety over increasing numbers of “new stock” immigrants—and the changing face of an industrializing America—gave rise to greater popular interest in stories with a simple focus on localized folk culture and “old stock” immigrant tradition. In the footsteps of writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Sarah Orne Jewett, the Pennsylvania German writings of Elsie Singmaster emerged to great popularity and acclaim.   Born and raised in the Pennsylvania German tradition, Elsie Singmaster wrote extensively over the first half of the twentieth century. Through her intimate knowledge of the community, Singmaster exposed the nation’s expanding readership to Pennsylvania German beliefs, culture, and distinct dialect without denigrating the community or resorting to stereotypes. She believed that the Pennsylvania Germans embodied the best of the nation’s ideals, and she crafted her characters and stories to participate in the national dialogue about immigration, development, and the definition of a hardworking, middle-class sensibility grounded in Old World traditions. While Singmaster’s work fell out of sight as the century wore on, her writings remain a significant contribution to the study of both Pennsylvania German history and culture and the literature of the last century. This volume restores to print sixteen of Singmaster’s short stories, reintroducing these important works into a new context of American development.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50859609751825,"sku":"CIN0271035439VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53152104612113,"sku":"CIN0271035439G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0271035439.jpg?v=1751389867"},{"product_id":"foreigners-in-their-own-land-book-steven-m-nolt-9780271021997","title":"Foreigners in Their Own Land","description":"Historians of the early Republic are just beginning to tell the stories of the period’s ethnic minorities. In Foreigners in Their Own Land, Steven M. 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Though they would maintain a remarkably stable and identifiable subculture well into the twentieth century, Pennsylvania Germans were, even by the eve of the Civil War, the most \"inside\" of \"outsiders.\" They represent the complex and often paradoxical ways in which many Americans have managed the process of assimilation to their own advantage. 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The second half reprints in chronological order fourteen key writings by Hostetler with commentaries and annotations by Weaver-Zercher.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51602786681105,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51602787827985,"sku":"CIN0271026863G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53514411049233,"sku":"NIN9780271026862","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0271026863.jpg?v=1751133880"},{"product_id":"powwowing-among-the-pennsylvania-dutch-book-david-w-kriebel-9780271032139","title":"Powwowing Among the Pennsylvania Dutch","description":"Known in Pennsylvania Dutch as Brauche or Braucherei, the folk-healing practice of powwowing was thought to draw  the power of God to heal all manner of physical and spiritual ills. Based on seven years of fieldwork and interviews, David Kriebel's study reveals the world, history, and culture of powwowing in southeastern and central Pennsylvania.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51686615220497,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51686615449873,"sku":"CIN0271032138G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53495616110865,"sku":"CIN0271032138VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0271032138.jpg?v=1751071055"},{"product_id":"powwowing-among-the-pennsylvania-dutch-book-david-w-kriebel-9780271075754","title":"Powwowing Among the Pennsylvania Dutch","description":"Known in Pennsylvania Dutch as Brauche or Braucherei, the folk-healing practice of powwowing was thought to draw  the power of God to heal all manner of physical and spiritual ills. 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These mass-produced printed sheets allowed both the Renaissance and the Reformation to spread with previously unimaginable speed, and when German immigrants made their way to North America, the cultural significance of the broadside followed. Don Yoder’s The Pennsylvania German Broadside examines the history and legacy of these printed sheets within the Pennsylvania German community.   The author defines a broadside as any piece of paper printed on one side that is intended to be given away or sold. Where some experts have narrowed the definition of the broadside to focus primarily on song and ballad broadsides, Professor Yoder’s definition encompasses a much wider range of material. In this more comprehensive approach to the medium, not only “street literature” but also such documents as elegies, spiritual testaments, and certificates of birth, baptism, confirmation, and marriage are all considered legitimate broadsides that tie the individual to the culture of the community. After tracing the migration of the broadside from Germany to America, the author dedicates each of ten chapters to a specific broadside subject, including medical broadsides, political and military broadsides, sale bills, posters, house blessings, and “letters from heaven.” All German texts have been translated or paraphrased for the reader’s convenience.   Professor Yoder recently donated a vast collection of Pennsylvania German broadsides to the Library Company of Philadelphia. A selection of these artifacts, part of the Roughwood Collection, will go on display in September 2005 as the centerpiece of a broadside exhibition at the Library Company. More than a catalogue of the exhibition, this book explores the history and cultural significance of the broadside, illuminating the ways in which it both reflected and influenced Pennsylvania German life.   Intended for historians, folklorists, collectors, and general readers, The Pennsylvania German Broadside features more than 200 illustrations and an engaging, accessible text.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52963491283217,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52963492102417,"sku":"CIN0271026790G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780271026794.jpg?v=1766438418"},{"product_id":"voices-of-the-turtledoves-book-jeff-bach-9780271027449","title":"Voices of the Turtledoves","description":"Winner, 2004 Dale W. Brown Book Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies  Winner, 2005 Outstanding Publication, Communal Studies Association  Co-published with the Pennsylvania German Society\/Vandenhoeck \u0026amp; Ruprecht   The Ephrata Cloister was a community of radical Pietists founded by Georg Conrad Beissel (1691–1768), a charismatic mystic who had been a journeyman baker in Europe. In 1720 he and a few companions sought a new life in William Penn’s land of religious freedom, eventually settling on the banks of the Cocalico Creek in what is now Lancaster County. They called their community “Ephrata,” after the Hebrew name for the area around Bethlehem. Voices of the Turtledoves is a fascinating look at the sacred world that flourished at Ephrata.   In Voices of the Turtledoves, Jeff Bach is the first to draw extensively on Ephrata’s manuscript resources and on recent archaeological investigations to present an overarching look at the community. He concludes that the key to understanding all the various aspects of life at Ephrata—its architecture, manuscript art, and social organization—is the religious thought of Beissel and his co-leaders.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53181210820881,"sku":"NLS9780271027449","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53567805718801,"sku":"CIN0271027444VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780271027449.jpg?v=1772237086"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/pennsylvania-german-history-and-culture-book-series.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}