| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 131.4

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| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 131.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Reviews

Horse-and-Buggy Mennonites: Hoofbeats of Humility in a Postmodern World. By Donald B. Kraybill and James P. Hurd. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. xii, 362 pp. Illustrations, appendices, notes, selected references, index. Cloth, $40; paper, $19.95.)
A few writers have produced books about Old Order Mennonite life, but none as comprehensive as this. This thorough sociological study is the first of its kind of the Wenger Mennonites, the largest of the Old Order Mennonite groups. The authors answer more questions than ten busloads of tourists could ever think to ask. Donald Kraybill and James Hurd not only explain a little-understood (and oft-misunderstood) community of faith; they expose the dynamics that contribute to the thriving of this sectarian community and the retention of its young people in the faith of their parents. As readers of his other books have discovered, Kraybill is a scholar who "gets it" in regard to plain-sect groups; he understands what makes them tick: the logic behind the practices.	1
The opening chapter locates the Wenger Mennonites on both the geographical map and the Mennonite map. The Wenger Church has its unique place within the spectrum of Mennonite groups; it represents one widely followed way among many ways to be Mennonite, and the most traveled way among Old Order Mennonites. Readers less acquainted with the Old Order communities will be surprised to learn how fast these communities are growing and how extensively they are spreading into new regions of the United States. Kraybill and Hurd give us a brief history of the Old Order phenomenon among Mennonites and the specific events that led in 1927 to the formation of a group of Mennonites that rejected ownership of the automobile, led by Bishop Joseph O. Wenger.	. . .

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