A Peculiar Mixture

Through innovative interdisciplinary methodologies and fresh avenues of inquiry, the nine essays collected in A Peculiar Mixture endeavor to transform how we understand the bewildering multiplicity and complexity that characterized the experience of German-speaking people in the middle colonies. They explore how the various cultural expressions of German speakers helped them bridge regional, religious, and denominational divides and eventually find a way to partake in America’s emerging national identity. Instead of thinking about early American culture and literature as evolving continuously as a singular entity, the contributions to this volume conceive of it as an ever-shifting and tangled “web of contact zones.” They present a society with a plurality of different native and colonial cultures interacting not only with one another but also with cultures and traditions from outside the colonies, in a “peculiar mixture” of Old World practices and New World influences. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Rosalind J. Beiler, Patrick M. Erben, Cynthia G. Falk, Marie Basile McDaniel, Philip Otterness, Liam Riordan, Matthias Schönhofer, and Marianne S. Wokeck.

The first in the Electra McDonnell series from Edgar-nominated author Ashley Weaver, set in England during World War II, A Peculiar Combination is a delightful mystery filled with spies, murder, romance, and the author's signature wit. “Filled with wry humor, tight suspense, and a delightful cast of characters.”—Alyssa Maxwell, author of the Gilded Newport mysteries FIRST RULE: DON’T LOSE YOUR CONCENTRATION. Electra McDonnell and her family earn their living outside the law. Breaking into the homes of the rich and picking the locks on their safes may not be condoned by British law enforcement, but with World War II in full swing, Uncle Mick’s locksmith business just can’t pay the bills anymore. SECOND RULE: DON’T MAKE MISTAKES. So when Uncle Mick receives a tip about a safe full of jewels in an empty house, he and Ellie can’t resist. All is going as planned—until the pair is caught red-handed. But instead of arresting them, government official Major Ramsey has an offer: either Ellie agrees to help him break into a safe and retrieve blueprints crucial to the British war effort, or he turns her over to the police. THIRD RULE: DON’T GET CAUGHT. Ellie doesn’t care for the major’s imperious manner, but she has no choice. However, when they break into the house, they find the safe open and empty, and a German spy dead on the floor. Soon, Ellie and Major Ramsey are forced to put aside their differences to unmask the double agent, and stop Allied plans from falling into enemy hands.

The acclaimed author’s “transcendent story about the healing power of love and art” set in the New England woods—“magisterial and . . . beautifully written” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Hewitt Pearce lives alone in his Vermont family home, producing custom ironwork and safeguarding a small collection of art his late father left behind. When Jessica, a troubled young vagabond, washes up in his backwoods one morning, Hewitt’s hermetic existence is challenged. As he gradually uncovers Jessica’s secrets and reestablishes contact with Emily, a woman he thought he had lost twenty years before, Hewitt must confront his own dark history and rediscover how much he craves human connection. Rendered in prose that is “lustrous—rich in supple dialogue and finely patterned imagery,” A Peculiar Grace is a remarkable achievement by one of our finest authors, an insightful portrait of family secrets, and a rich tapestry filled with characters who have learned to survive by giving shape to their losses (Booklist). “Echoing the rhapsodic specificity and gravitas of Steinbeck and Kent Haruf, Lent has constructed a resolute tale of paradise lost and found.” —Booklist, starred review “Jeffrey Lent has quietly created some of the finest novels of our new century.” —Ron Rash “Jeffrey Lent builds characters and their world like a painter layering his canvas, telling his story but substantiating it with color and light.” —Tim Pears “Sentence by sentence rural New England comes alive, and Lent’s language draws you in like a clear stream in summer.” —Tim Gautreaux

Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- INTRODUCTION: Pennsylvania German Studies -- PART 1 HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY -- 1. The Old World Background -- 2. To the New World: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries -- 3. Communities and Identities: Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Centuries -- PART 2 CULTURE AND SOCIETY -- 4. The Pennsylvania German Language -- 5. Language Use among Anabaptist Groups -- 6. Religion -- 7. The Amish -- 8. Literature -- 9. Agriculture and Industries -- 10. Architecture and Cultural Landscapes -- 11. Furniture and Decorative Arts -- 12. Fraktur and Visual Culture -- 13. Textiles -- 14. Food and Cooking -- 15. Medicine -- 16. Folklore and Folklife -- 17. Education -- 18. Heritage and Tourism -- 19. Popular Culture and Media -- References -- Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z -- Color plates follow page

In Citizens in a Strange Land, Hermann Wellenreuther examines the broadsides—printed single sheets—produced by the Pennsylvania German community. These broadsides covered topics ranging from local controversies and politics to devotional poems and hymns. Each one is a product of and reaction to a particular historical setting. To understand them fully, Wellenreuther systematically reconstructs Pennsylvania’s print culture, the material conditions of life, the problems German settlers faced, the demands their communities made on the individual settlers, the complications to be overcome, and the needs to be satisfied. He shows how these broadsides provided advice, projections, and comment on phases of life from cradle to grave.

Despite shifting trends in the study of Oceanic Atlantic history, the colonial Atlantic world as it is described by historians today continues to be a largely English-only space; even when other language communities are examined, they, too, are considered to be monolingual and discrete. Babel of the Atlantic pushes back against this monolingual fallacy by documenting multilingualism, translation, and fluid movement across linguistic borders. Focusing on Philadelphia and surrounding areas that include Germantown, Bethlehem, and the so-called Indian country to the west, this volume demonstrates the importance of viewing inhabitants not as members of isolated language communities, whether English, German, Lenape, Mohican, or others, but as creators of a vibrant zone of mixed languages and shifting politics. Organized around four themes—religion, education, race and abolitionism, and material culture and architecture—and drawing from archives such as almanacs, newspapers, and the material world, the chapters in this volume show how polyglot, tolerant, and multilingual spaces encouraged diverse peoples to coexist. Contributors examine subjects such as the multicultural Moravian communities in colonial Pennsylvania, the Charity School movement of the 1750s, and the activities of Quaker abolitionists, showing how educational and religious movements addressed and embraced cultural and linguistic variety. Drawing early American scholarship beyond the normative narrative of monolingualism, this volume will be invaluable to historians and sociolinguists whose work focuses on Pennsylvania and colonial, revolutionary, and antebellum America. In addition to the editor, the contributors include Craig Atwood, Patrick M. Erben, Cynthia G. Falk, Katherine Faull, Wolfgang Flügel, Katharine Gerbner, Maruice Jackson, Lisa Minardi, Jürgen Overhoff, and Birte Pfleger.

A young writer hits the dusty Texas highway for the California coast in this “brilliant . . . funny and dangerously tender” (Time) tale of art and sacrifice. Hailed as one of “the best novels ever set in America’s fourth largest city” (Douglas Brinkley, New York Times Book Review), All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is a powerful demonstration of Larry McMurtry’s “comic genius, his ability to render a sense of landscape, and interior intellection tension” (Jim Harrison, New York Times Book Review). Desperate to break from the “mundane happiness” of Houston, budding writer Danny Deck hops in his car, “El Chevy,” bound for the West Coast on a road trip filled with broken hearts and bleak realities of the artistic life. A cast of unforgettable characters joins the naive troubadour’s pilgrimage to California and back to Texas, including a cruel, long-legged beauty; an appealing screenwriter; a randy college professor; and a genuine if painfully “normal” friend. Since the novel’s publication in 1972, Danny Deck has “been far more successful at getting loved by readers than he ever was at getting loved by the women in his life” (McMurtry), a testament to the author’s incomparable talent for capturing the essential tragicomedy of the human experience.

This biography of Werner Scholem (1895–1940), former Zionist activist and later chief organiser of the German Communist Party, sheds new light on German-Jewish relations in the Weimar Republic, focussing on a revolutionary’s lifelong struggle against Anti-Semitism.