Any understanding of the history of social reform in America begins with Woolman, and understanding Woolman begins here.
A masterful biography of the Quaker prophet and path-breaking social reformer.
Woolman (1720–72) remains the earliest and most complete American embodiment of the notion of a “social conscience.” In Mount Holly, N.J., he shed a succession of jobs (most notably as a shopkeeper, tailor, schoolteacher and legal functionary) to devote more time to ministering for the Society of Friends, carrying his message throughout the colonies and, by the end of his life, even to England. He was a pacifist and a tax resister, and he preached a doctrine of peace with the Indians, care for the impoverished, kindness to animals and devotion to simplicity. Remembered today primarily for his pioneering anti-slavery stance, Woolman sought in the gentlest possible fashion to convert others to the truth he believed came directly from God. Closely tracking Woolman’s spiritual autobiography, The Journal of John Woolman—remarkably still in print since its 1774 publication—and relying on Woolman’s essays and pamphlets, Slaughter (History/Univ. of Notre Dame; Exploring Lewis and Clark: Reflections on Men and Wilderness, 2003, etc.) beautifully explicates the spiritual growth of this secular saint. The author also applies a thorough knowledge of the period’s philosophical, theological and historical currents to explain a man whose deep religiosity and exquisite sensitivities prevented him from riding a horse (an unnecessary burden to the animal), wearing dyed clothing (a product, even at some remove, of slave labor) or drafting a will that conveyed a slave. So much saintliness might be hard to endure if not for Slaughter’s keen awareness of his subject’s eccentricities and shortcomings: For example, Woolman regularly abandoned his wife and child for his wide-ranging and frequently dangerous itinerant ministry; he deemed harmless sleight of hand and juggling to be “frivolous toying with the universe”; he opposed inoculations against small pox. Nevertheless, by the end of this detailed, well-written consideration of Woolman and his enduring significance, the reader can’t help but share Slaughter’s admiration for his hero’s sincerity, courage, persistence and humility.
Any understanding of the history of social reform in America begins with Woolman, and understanding Woolman begins here.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8090-9514-8
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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