History Of The Amish

The Amish, one of America’s most intriguingly private, unique, and often misunderstood religious communities, have survived for three hundred years! How has that happened? While much has been written on the Amish, little has been revealed about their history. This book brings together in one volume a thorough history of the Amish people. From their beginnings in Europe through their settlement in North America, the Amish have struggled to maintain their beliefs and traditions in often hostile settings. Now updated, the book gives an in-depth look at how the modern Amish church continues to grow and change. It covers recent developments in new Amish settlements, the community’s conflict and negotiation with government, the Nickel Mines school shooting, and the media’s constant fascination with this religious people, from reality TV shows to romance novels. Authoritative, thorough, and interestingly written, A History of the Amish presents the deep and rich heritage of the Amish people with dozens of illustrations and updated statistics. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Intimate view of life in the Amish world with more than 150 letters and journal entries, poems, stories, and riddles.

""A major contribution to our understanding of Anabaptist history and the ongoing construction of Anabaptist identity."" -- Mennonite Quarterly Review.

Drawing on more than twenty years of fieldwork and collaborative research, The Amish: A Concise Introduction is a compact but richly detailed portrait of Amish life. In fewer than 150 pages, readers will come away with a clear understanding of the complexities of these simple people.

Explores the moral dilemmas faced by various religious sects and how these groups struggled to come to terms with the effects of wartime Americanization-- without sacrificing their religious beliefs and values.

This encyclopedia for Amish genealogists is certainly the most definitive, comprehensive, and scholarly work on Amish genealogy that has ever been attempted. It is easy to understand why it required years of meticulous record-keeping to cover so many families (144 different surnames up to 1850). Covers all known Amish in the first settlements in America and shows their lineage for several generations. (955pp. index. hardcover. Pequea Bruderschaft Library, revised edition 2007.)

A revelatory look at Amish youth as they have never been looked at before Rumspringa is a fascinating look at a little-known Amish coming-of-age ritual, the rumspringa—the period of "running around" that begins for their youth at age sixteen. Through vivid portraits of teenagers in Ohio and Indiana, Tom Shachtman offers an account of Amish life as a mirror to the soul-searching and questing that we recognize as a generally intrinsic part of adolescence. The trappings of the Amish way of life—the "plain" clothes and electricity-free farms—conceal the communities' mystery: how they manage to retain their young people and perpetuate themselves generation after generation. The key to this is the rumspringa, when Amish youth are allowed to live outside the bounds of their faith, experimenting with alcohol, premarital sex, trendy clothes, telephones, drugs, and wild parties. By allowing them such freedom, their parents hope they will learn enough to help them make the most important decision of their lives—whether to be baptized as Christians, join the church, and forever give up worldly ways, or to remain out in the world. In this searching book, Shachtman draws on his skills as a documentarian to capture young people on the cusp of a fateful decision, and to give us an original and deeply affecting portrait of the Amish as a whole.

Revised edition of this classic work brings the story of the Amish into the 21st century. Since its publication in 1989, The Riddle of Amish Culture has become recognized as a classic work on one of America's most distinctive religious communities. But many changes have occurred within Amish society over the past decade, from westward migrations and a greater familiarity with technology to the dramatic shift away from farming into small business which is transforming Amish culture. For this revised edition, Donald B. Kraybill has taken these recent changes into account, incorporating new demographic research and new interviews he has conducted among the Amish. In addition, he includes a new chapter describing Amish recreation and social gatherings, and he applies the concept of "social capital" to his sensitive and penetrating interpretation of how the Amish have preserved their social networks and the solidarity of their community.