The Amish in the American Imagination

At the dawn of the 20th century, representations of the Amish were rarely sympathetic and often bordered on caricature; at the beginning of the 21st, the Amish are the objects of fascination and even reverence. In The Amish in the American Imagination, David Weaver-Zercher explores how Americans have ""fashioned the renowned sectarians for their own purposes to mark boundaries, express fears, support causes and, in many cases, make a profit."" Weaver-Zercher does an especially fine job of revealing how Americans' anxieties about modern technology are demonstrated through their changing cultural representations of the Amish. This is a fine and well-written study, its prose a winning mixture of plain and fancy. ( Nov. 15)