Books

By rejecting the car and the assembly-line production that goes along with it, Old Order Mennonites have kept their way of life on their farms and in their churches for 80 years. As industrialization transformed American society from rural-farming to city-factory, these Mennonites looked to the past for guidance. The Mennonites trace their lineage back to the Anabaptist movement in southern Germany and Switzerland in the wake of the Protestant Reformation in 1517. The Wenger Church (Old Order Mennonites) was formed in 1927 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania when their leader and bishop, Joseph O. Wenger, led their formation after a controversy over the car with other Mennonites. Today, the U.S. is home to 18,000 Mennonites in 49 congregations in Pennsylvania, New York, Missouri, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Iowa, and Michigan. MORE »

The Palabristas will be slinging words this Friday at the Loft Literary Center in celebration of their new chapbook, Outside the Lines. The event celebrates the voices of a diverse group of Latino poets and spoken word artists tackling topics of love, loss, politics, and more. MORE »

Critic Jan Swafford has called the music of Bach “indestructible”—whether performed on harpsichord, on piano, on Moog synthesizer, or by jazz vocal group, the master composer’s soaring counterpoint never fails to impress. Shakespeare’s plots have a similar quality: the Bard’s precisely judged character studies have served as sturdy skeletons for everything from prep-school melodramas to sci-fi creature features. The newest addition to this kissing-cousin canon is also one of the most self-conscious: Lin Enger’s novel Undiscovered Country, which sets Hamlet in the north woods of Minnesota. MORE »

In Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire, David Mura explores the tension between forgetting and remembering. Mura, who has gained fame as a poet and spoken-word performer, now tries his hand at narrative prose with this complex novel about a man unearthing his past, the past of his family, and the truth of the history of his own community. MORE »