Nonfiction about the Amish

If you are inclined to read about the Amish, everything by Donald B. Kraybill is excellent. I also enjoyed Richard Ammon's Growing up Amish, Visits with the Amish by Linda Egenes. Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer's Journal, by David Kline, is one of my all-time favorite nature writings. I'd like to read Kline's Scratching the Woodchuck: Nature on an Amish Farm and Letters from Larksong: An Amish Naturalist Explores His Organic Farm.

Why I Left the Amish: A Memoir by Saloma Miller Furlong will break your heart--it describes in detail all of the bad parts of a closed culture, as does Ira Wagler's Growing Up Amish: A Memoir. On the other hand, I found David Wagler (Ira's father) to be long-winded and egotistical. Joe Mackall's Plain Secrets: An Outsider among the Amish was fine.

Weaver-Zercher, Valerie. Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels. 2013. Amazing book about the topic. Interesting that I do not fit the typical evangelical reader, however. Although reading this genre as a way of trying to maintain hope and faith in the difficulties of a hypermodern world and life does describe me.

To read:  
Miller, Marlene. Grace leads me home. 2011 memoir of becoming Amish.
Nolt and Meyers. Plain Diversity: Amish Cultures and Identities.
Hurst and McConnell. An Amish Paradox: Diversity and Change....
Other books in the Young Center Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies series.

To avoid: Olson, Anna Dee. Growing Up Amish: Insider Secrets from One Woman's Inspirational Journey. Badly written memoir from a vanity press.



Green means best in my opinion, purple means I have it, yellow means I would like to have it (a.k.a. wish list), turquoise means look for it to read.