Pity My Simplicity

How did the early Evangelicals pass on their beliefs to their children? This book is a study of a strangely neglected part of Evangelical history. But it is not merely, nor even especially, a historian's book - it is of general interest, absorbingly so. The reader is plunged into the child's world of the late eighteenth century, a world both surprisingly familiar and terrifyingly unknown. Their home life is examined, their schools and Sunday Schools, the sermons preached for them, the books and tracts and magazines they read, the diaries they wrote. Much of the atmosphere is death-haunted and repellent, entirely foreign to educational thought today. And yet ... the final proof of the efficacy of any system must be its fruits. Actual case-histories are considered, and conclusions attempted. The power of Evangelicalism must have vanished from the earth in a generation, had the fathers not nurtured the children, believing devoutly in their own educational abilities. Yet their many detractors have called them bigots, fanatics, fools and madmen. How fair is this judgment? And for today, how much of those first beliefs do we retain? What is our debt to those Evangelical fathers? A fascinating piece of social history is unfolded - often grim, even macabre, sometimes pathetic, occasionally gay but never, never dull.

Mushrooms on the Moor is a collection of essays from a Baptist preacher on the joys of everyday things like books, clothes, or even mushrooms. Boreham challenges himself to open up the moments of his life into a laughing, precious sweetness accessible to readers from all walks of life. Excerpt: "I have allowed the Mushrooms on the Moor to throw the glamour of their name over the entire volume because, in some respects, they are the most typical and representative things in it. They express so little but suggest so much! What fun we had, in the days of auld lang syne, when we scoured the dewy fields in search of them!"

Speculation abounds about the relationship between Frank Lloyd Wright and Ayn Rand. Was Wright the inspiration for Howard Roark, the architect hero of Rand's The Fountainhead? What can be made of their collaboration on the book's failed 1944 movie adaptation, and what can be gleaned from the 1949 Hollywood production of The Fountainhead? Where does the FBI--Wright was dubbed a communist sympathizer, and Rand was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee--fit into the story? Art, architecture, philosophy, film and politics come together in this exploration, which relies on the writings of Wright and Rand, FBI files, visual evidence and more to cement their connection. Chapters are devoted to Wright and Rand, the two together, their parts in both the failed production of The Fountainhead and the successful one, and the effect FBI harassment had on the movie and on their lives. Subsequent chapters discuss Wright's place as a Hollywood architect, and offer telling set designs and architectural images from the 1949 production of The Fountainhead. Several appendices supplement the illustrated text, and there is a filmography of movies mentioned in the book. A bibliography and index are also included.