The Traveling Chautauqua

Before radio and sound movies, early 20th century performers and lecturers traveled the nation providing entertainment and education to Americans thirsty for culture. These "chautauquas" brought politicians, activists, scholars, musical ensembles and theatrical productions to remote communities. A conduit for global perspectives and progressive ideas, these gatherings introduced issues like equal suffrage, prohibition and pure food laws to rural America. This book explores an overlooked yet influential movement in U.S. history, capturing the vagaries of speakers' and performers' lives on the road and their reception by audiences. Excerpts from lectures and plays portray a vibrant circuit that in a single summer drew 20 million in more than 9,000 towns.

The first book in a multi-volume set on American fads. Gives data on the entertainers, art, movies, literature, television programs, and music that have captured national attention and followers in the past 200 years. Each of the 120 entries examines the nature of the fad and its importance to the American scene, influencing our vocabularies, fashions, leisure time pursuits, expectations about life, marketing strategies, and spending habits. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

At a time when people are increasingly considering themselves "spiritual but not religious," Wading in Water speaks of spirituality as an individual's connection to a greater whole. Hence, the process of coming to know what we call God is also the process of knowing oneself. Thinking comprehensively, spirituality involves what is, what can be, and what ought to be. When activity, rationality, and morality are infused with creativity and imagination, meaning that when body, mind, and soul are inspirited or harmonious with Spirit, spirituality is authentic, healthy, and vital. Healthy spirituality is integrative, both individually and corporately, in that it emerges from wholeness and yearns for wholeness. How do we know if we are on a path to increased wholeness? When we experience not only individual well-being, but help generate the same well-being toward others. In other words, wholesome self-love leads to greater love for others and for all of life. While Wading may be seen as a text on spirituality, its uniqueness is its connection of spirituality with creative arts such as poetry, literary allegory, film, music, theatre, drama, and dance. Wading is not a comprehensive study, for the purpose is to promote the enrichment of life through beauty, creativity, diversity, risk-taking, newness, serendipity, and synchronicity, joint features of spirituality and the arts. Like its companion text, Walking on Water, this volume is useful for individual or group study. Each chapter concludes with questions suitable for discussion or reflection.

In this autobiography, D. Gordon Rohman, a child of the Thirties, brings to life in loving detail the world of the small town in which he grew up. He begins his story when he was age three with a mysterious kairos moment in which he was awakened to himself by his mothers singing. Ever since, he has cherished the intuition that he has been on a sacred journey, touched by God, and renewed every morning as he awakened to ever larger life. Raised a Baptist, his faith journey led him to seek God in the self when he discovered Emerson and Thoreau in college. In his 50s, he was awakened to a breathtaking cosmic vision of God and Christianity by the works of C. S. Lewis. The author fills his journey with stories of the many families who, he says, made me possible. I built my life on the rock of two families, he writes, the one I was born into and the one my wife Pam and I created in which we raised seven children. But I have been nurtured by many other familiesof my hometown, of ancestors, of in-laws, of comradeship, of vocation, of avocation, and of faith. My story, the author writes, runs like a two-way street filled with the traffic of active and passive verbsgiving and being given, serving and being served, helping and being helped, teaching and being taught, loving and being loved. Readers of this heartfelt and insightful autobiography will discover one mans road to Heaven filled with loveof ideas, friends, work, soul mates, stories, families and God.

Using primary sources from archives around the country, Democracy as Discussion traces the early history of the Speech field, the development of discussion as an alternative to debate, and the Deweyan, Progressive philosophy of discussion that swept the United States in the early twentieth century.