An Energy Field More Intense Than War: The Nonviolent Tradition and American Literature (review)

Book Reviews65 unsatisfactory "extreme religious conviction" (p.25). In spite ofsuchweaknesses, this is ahighly valuable, stimulating volume rendered more cohesive than many collections by the inclusion of two indices and Patrick Collinson's critical conclusion. Future researchers should make full use of this fine book, but with caution, as the authors would no doubt wish. University of Minnesota, MorrisT.L. Underwood An EnergyFieldMoreIntense Than War: TheNonviolent Tradition and American Literature. By Michael True. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995. xxiii + 169 pp. Notes, bibliographical essay, and index. Cloth, $34.95; paper, $16.95 On page 128 of An Energy FieldMore Intense Than War Michael True writes: Most Americans grow up "illiterate" regarding nonviolent conflict resolution and active peacemaking. . . While other important achievements in American culture—public education, the distribution ofgoods and services, the orderly transfer of power within institutions—pass from one generation to the next, refined by each, nonviolence has to be relearned, almost from scratch. This short history of nonviolent discourse in the United States attempts to make its readers "literate" and "educated" and to preserve and deepen the peace narrative that is desperately trying to assert itself as a way oftelling the story of human experience. The book attempts a sweeping history of nonviolent discourse in America in seven short chapters packed with references to writers, activists and social change movements. For some readers, especially those unfamiliar with the work ofLynd, Cooney, and Michalowski, Chatfield, Bebedetti, Brock and O'Gorman, this material will be new; for scholars in the history ofnonviolence in America there may be little introduction to new material or thinkers; but for everyone there is presented amost useful digest ofoften neglected voices in the shaping of our culture and national character. To give oneself one hundred and seventy pages to cover more than two hundred years ofAmerican cultural history is to risk charges of oversimplification and superficiality, but Michael True manages to escape that sort ofcriticism. His book is evocative rather than exhaustive, and it has a very useful bibliographical essay (pp. 145-54) that reveals True's command of his material as well as being extremely helpful to those wanting to know more about the subject. 66Quaker History From the outset of the book True is clear to make his definition of "literature" not "belles lettres in the traditional sense" (xxiii), but rather "written discourse describing or reflecting initiatives for nonviolent social change" (xiii). This broader definition proves to be useful in exploring the diversity of American culture, as does his decision to include two definitions of nonviolence—"vision of love as an agent for fundamental social change" and the second, strategic or pragmatic nonviolence, defined by True as a "method ofwielding social, political, and economic power" (xii). When reading this history, one will encounter many familiar names in the history of American Literature—Melville, Hawthorne, Twain, Hemingway, Thoreau and others, but the most interesting, and perhaps also the most influential writers on nonviolence have not been writers offiction but essayists, pamphleteers and poets. True briefly sketches the lives and works of persons like Penn, Woolman, Paine, Garrison, Ballou, Burritt, Debs, Goldman, Day, King, etc., but many readers will find themselves more intrigued by the treatment he gives to perhaps lesser known figures. I have made a list formyselfofwriters True mentions whom I need to know more about, like Meridel LeSeuer, Muriel Rukeyser, Ammon Hennacy, Randolph Bourne, Stanley Kunitz, and Thomas McGrath, and no doubt many other readers interested both in cultural history and in the specific history ofnonviolence in America will make similar lists oftheir own. One leaves a reading ofthe whole book not only looking forward to encountering these unfamiliar voices, but also with the deepened awareness of the existence of a narrative that must be heard and promulgated ifthe "peaceable kingdom" imagined by America's early founders is ever to be realized. Earlham CollegeAnthony Bing Of "Good Laws " and "Good Men ": Law and Society in the Delaware Valley, 1680-1710. By William M. Offutt, Jr. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1995. Tables, notes, and index. $39.95. In the historical literature on justice systems there is an unmistakable deficiency. If one wishes to know who in society prosecuted, defended, judged, won...