The book consists of excerpts from interviews of senior members of State College Friends Meeting. The narrators who lived through the Great Depression tell of their difficult childhood--and yet in most cases one they regarded as happy. Some of the conscientious objectors during WWII tell of life in CPS camps; others speak of using nonviolent methods with mental patients, while still others relate the story of the human guinea experiments some of them participated in. Of those who did relief work after the war overseas, probably the most exciting tales are told by the four who worked with the Friends Ambulance Unit in China. They happened to be located close to where the Nationalists and the Communists were fighting.

The Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) had a devastating impact on China’s civilian population. Braving bandits, disease, and dangerous roads, the China Convoy – a Quaker-sponsored humanitarian unit – delivered medical supplies and provided famine relief in the unoccupied territory of “Free China” and later to both sides in the ensuing civil war. China Gadabouts examines the contested roles played by Western and Chinese nurses in the Convoy’s humanitarian efforts from 1941 to 1951. In so doing, it re-examines the quandaries of Quakers’ purportedly apolitical global engagement that remain salient for contemporary humanitarians. Susan Armstrong-Reid explores how this work gave meaning to the women’s lives and how they attempted to carve out personal and professional space despite a chaotic, unfamiliar, and occasionally hostile environment. China Gadabouts illuminates the ethical dilemmas, professional challenges, and opportunities presented by humanitarian nursing within a Western-based relief organization, while acknowledging its contentious imperial role. In doing so, it spotlights an understudied area of global nursing – its role within INGOs, now more active than ever in global health care.

Prayer of the World opens a window into an astonishingly beautiful world, showing life as a vast prayer in which we live and breathe. Through poetry and luminous photographs, it brings forth the voices of earth, sea, sky, and the entire web of life. From star fire to water's blue stillness, from eagle's soaring flight to canary's solemn teaching comes the plea: "Join the prayer; the web is greatly strained." Kathleen Maia and Ken traveled to many sites in the United States and beyond-she with her pen and notebook, and he with his camera. As their pilgrimage continued, they realized that the poetry and photography together created a stunning whole, a vibrant expression of Earth's life and Earth's plea: "Give back to the web; add your voice to the song. Join the Prayer of the World." As alarm, anxiety, and upheaval escalate across the globe, Prayer of the World raises not only Earth's lament, but also Earth's great hope: "All is connected in a living breathing web...the living pulse of energy that flows through all creation-each pulse a prayer." To learn more about Prayer of the World visit: www.prayeroftheworld.org

This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.