A seasoned curator and historian of Shakeriana (By Shaker Hands, 1975) here fondly remembers her summerlong stay, 26 years ago, at Canterbury Shaker Village in New Hampshire, then a living religious community. In the summer of 1972, Sprigg worked as a tour guide for visitors to the Canterbury Shakers. Her job brought her far more than an income. For it also provided her with the opportunity to befriend the seven elderly women who were then sustaining a two-centuries-old Shaker community even as it dwindled toward an end. Sweetly elegiac at its best, the book, enlivened by the author’s eloquent line drawings, evokes the personalities of these community stalwarts. There is Bertha Lindsay, the town’s eldress; Lillian Phelps, who forms its spiritual center; Gertrude Soule, a spunky commentator on all and sundry, whose health reports were indulgently dubbed “organ recitals”; the dowdy Ethel Hudson, who had settled into early retirement (a “loaf Believer”); elegant Alice Howland; the high-spirited Miriam Wall; and ominously Ethan Frome—ish—but giftedly green-thumbed—Mildred Wells, who hovered on the small society’s margins. Much, though not all, seems edenic among the Shakers, according to Sprigg’s observations. Citing an exception, she recounts the painful rift between Canterbury and Sabbathday Lake (for a look at the latter, see Suzanne Skees, God Among the Shakers, p. 255), a sibling community in Maine, over conflicting visions of the Shaker future, and also notes the tensions felt sometimes among Canterbury’s own members. Still, the memories dearest to the author—of ladies shifting gently in their front-porch rocking chairs or of their long-untouched, pine-scented attics—don—t always woo a reader’s interest. The odd imbalance befalling the frugal Shakers, who have spent and multiplied little, of abundant assets husbanded by a shrinking constituency of members (14, in 1972), is mirrored here in Sprigg’s surfeit of pages bent on describing a world-in-miniature. A chatty memorial with too much verbiage. (9 illustrations)
Pub Date: June 6, 1998
ISBN: 0-679-45504-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1998
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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