The Pennsylvania Dutch

<p>Fredric Klees' <em>The Pennsylvania Dutch</em> is the best and most inclusive volume with an over-all approach to its subject. I have tried he says to make this book a comprehensive treatment of the Pennsylvania Dutch in which everything was touched on and nothing ignored.</p><p>It is a purpose achieved on the whole in a book of six parts (Religion The Past By the Sweat of Their Brow The Country and the People Folkways and The Arts) with thirty-two chapters plus A Forward Glance and Epilogue all enhanced by the author's thirty-three typical pen-and-ink drawings.</p><p><br></p><p>Mr. Klees presents his own people in terms of their origin and background; history struggles and experience in America during war and peace; contributions to agriculture industry and art; beliefs superstitions and other folklore; and characteristics dialect place names costumes holidays recreations and foods. His intimate knowledge of the field covers the whole gamut of Pennsylvania Dutch life and adorns the religious social and political aspects with new facts and views.</p><p><br></p><p>In a scintillating style with an occasional touch of humor he paints a forceful but honest picture of the Pennsylvania Dutch which he also fits into the general life of state and nation. Here is not just another book about the Pennsylvania Dutch. The reader will feel the full impact of these people upon the past and the present.</p><p><br></p><p>He will learn first about the Mennonites the Amish and the other plain people to whom the outsider turns at the mention of the term. Next he will meet the church people (Lutheran and Reformed) Moravians and others forming the large majority and not recognizable by their dress. Then he will come upon the hotbed of religions the curious and fanatical communal groups. It is a logical approach when one considers the vital r6le of religion in the lives of our ancestors. The reader sees them across the broad Atlantic only to face new hardships in a wilderness of war and Indians. He watches the new Americans conquer By the Sweat of Their Brow; till the soil; build forge and mill also wagon road canal and railroad into the Dutch Country. How they lived and felt a veritable biography of a people from cradle to tombstone unfolds for the reader.</p>