The Remarkable Life Of John Murray Spear

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The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear

Author : John Benedict Buescher
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear by : John Benedict Buescher

Download or read book The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear written by John Benedict Buescher and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Murray Spear was one of nineteenth-century America's most interesting characters. A leading social agitator against slavery and capital punishment, Spear also became the nation's most flamboyant spiritualist, inventor of spirit machines, and advocate of free love. In his captivating biography, John Buescher brings to life Spear's superlatively odd story. Born in 1804, John Murray Spear began his career as a Universalist minister. Later he was a colleague of William Lloyd Garrison and Theodore Parker in the abolitionist movement and worked as an activist among the New England reformers and Transcendentalists such as Bronson Alcott, Lydia Maria Child, and Dorothea Dix. In mid-life, Spear turned to the new revelation of spiritualism and came under the thrall of what he believed were spirit messages. Spear's spirits dictated that he and a small group of associates embark on plans for a perpetual motion machine, an electric ship propelled by psychic batteries, a vehicle that would levitate in the air, and a sewing machine that would work with no hands. human liberation - sexual and otherwise - were far stranger than anyone outside his closest associates imagined, and were aimed at the eventual manufacturing of human beings and the improvement of the race. In the last years of his life, retired by the spirits and regarded by fellow Gilded Age progressives as a visitor from another age, if not another planet, Spear helped organize support for anarchist, socialist, peace, and labor causes. Spear's life, an odd mixture of comic absurdity and serious foreshadowing of the future, provides us with a unique perspective on nineteenth-century American religious and social life.

An Introduction to the Unitarian and Universalist Traditions

Author : Andrea Greenwood
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139504533
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (395 download)

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Book Synopsis An Introduction to the Unitarian and Universalist Traditions by : Andrea Greenwood

Download or read book An Introduction to the Unitarian and Universalist Traditions written by Andrea Greenwood and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-11 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is a free faith expressed, organised and governed? How are diverse spiritualities and theologies made compatible? What might a religion based in reason and democracy offer today's world? This book will help the reader to understand the contemporary liberal religion of Unitarian Universalism in a historical and global context. Andrea Greenwood and Mark W. Harris challenge the view that the Unitarianism of New England is indigenous and the point from which the religion spread. Relationships between Polish radicals and the English Dissenters existed and the English radicals profoundly influenced the Unitarianism of the nascent United States. Greenwood and Harris also explore the US identity as Unitarian Universalist since a 1961 merger and its current relationship to international congregations, particularly in the context of twentieth-century expansion into Asia.

Ghosts: A Social History, vol 4

Author : Owen Davies
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1040249310
Total Pages : 549 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Ghosts: A Social History, vol 4 by : Owen Davies

Download or read book Ghosts: A Social History, vol 4 written by Owen Davies and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-01 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals changing perceptions of ghosts at different social levels from the Reformation through to the twentieth century in Britain and America. This five-volume set focuses on the key published debates that emerged in each century, and illustrates the range of literary formats that reported or discussed ghosts.

The Shape of Utopia

Author : Irene Cheng
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 1452960968
Total Pages : 533 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (529 download)

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Book Synopsis The Shape of Utopia by : Irene Cheng

Download or read book The Shape of Utopia written by Irene Cheng and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2023-08-01 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How nineteenth-century social reformers devised a new set of radical blueprints for society In the middle of the nineteenth century, a utopian impulse flourished in the United States through the circulation of architectural and urban plans predicated on geometrically distinct designs. Though the majority of such plans remained unrealized, The Shape of Utopia emphasizes the enduring importance of these radical propositions and their ability to visualize alternatives to what was then a newly emerging capitalist nation. Drawing diagrammatic plans for structures such as octagonal houses, a hexagonal anarchist city, and circular centers of equitable commerce, these various architectural utopians applied geometric forms to envision a more just and harmonious society. Highlighting the inherent political capacity of architecture, Irene Cheng showcases how these visionary planners used their blueprints as persuasive visual rhetoric that could mobilize others to share in their aspirations for a better world. Offering an extensive and uniquely focused view of mid-nineteenth-century America’s rapidly changing cultural landscape, this book examines these utopian plans within the context of significant economic and technological transformation, encompassing movements such as phrenology, anarchism, and spiritualism. Engaging equally with architectural history, visual culture studies, and U.S. history, The Shape of Utopia documents a pivotal moment in American history when ordinary people ardently believed in the potential to reshape society.

Blood & Ivy: The 1849 Murder That Scandalized Harvard

Author : Paul Collins
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393245152
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (932 download)

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Book Synopsis Blood & Ivy: The 1849 Murder That Scandalized Harvard by : Paul Collins

Download or read book Blood & Ivy: The 1849 Murder That Scandalized Harvard written by Paul Collins and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Well-researched and beautifully written.…Collins knows how to build suspense.” —San Francisco Chronicle On November 23rd of 1849, in the heart of Boston, one of the city’s richest men simply vanished. Dr. George Parkman, a Brahmin who owned much of Boston’s West End, was last seen that afternoon visiting his alma mater, Harvard Medical School. Police scoured city tenements and the harbor, and leads put the elusive Dr. Parkman at sea or hiding in Manhattan. But one Harvard janitor held a much darker suspicion: that their ruthless benefactor had never left the Medical School building alive. His shocking discoveries in a chemistry professor’s laboratory engulfed America in one of its most infamous trials: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. John White Webster. A baffling case of red herrings, grave robbery, and dismemberment, it became a landmark case in the use of medical forensics and the meaning of reasonable doubt. Paul Collins brings nineteenth-century Boston back to life in vivid detail, weaving together newspaper accounts, letters, journals, court transcripts, and memoirs from this groundbreaking case. Rich in characters and evocative in atmosphere, Blood & Ivy explores the fatal entanglement of new science and old money in one of America’s greatest murder mysteries.

Ghosts: A Social History, vol 1

Author : Owen Davies
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1040233570
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Ghosts: A Social History, vol 1 by : Owen Davies

Download or read book Ghosts: A Social History, vol 1 written by Owen Davies and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-01 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals changing perceptions of ghosts at different social levels from the Reformation through to the twentieth century in Britain and America. This five-volume set focuses on the key published debates that emerged in each century, and illustrates the range of literary formats that reported or discussed ghosts.

Upstate Cauldron

Author : Joscelyn Godwin
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438455968
Total Pages : 388 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Upstate Cauldron by : Joscelyn Godwin

Download or read book Upstate Cauldron written by Joscelyn Godwin and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2015-03-06 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bronze Medalist, 2016 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the US Northeast -Best Regional Non-Fiction Category Honorable Mention, 2015 Foreword Reviews INDIEFAB Book of the Year Awards in the Religion Category From 1776 to 1914, an amazing collection of prophets, mediums, sects, cults, utopian communities, and spiritual leaders arose in Upstate New York. Along with the best known of these, such as the Shakers, Mormons, and Spiritualists, this book explores more than forty other spiritual leaders or groups, some of them virtually unknown, but all of them fascinating. The author uncovers common threads that characterize these homegrown spiritualities, including roots in Western esoteric traditions, liberation from the psychological pressures of dogmatic Christianity, a preoccupation with sex, and involvement in the radical reform movements of the day. In addition to maps and photographs of surviving buildings and monuments, the book also features a gazetteer of sites listing 150 locations connected to these groups, which may be used as a helpful travel guide to the region.

The Occult World

Author : Christopher Partridge
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317596757
Total Pages : 1017 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (175 download)

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Book Synopsis The Occult World by : Christopher Partridge

Download or read book The Occult World written by Christopher Partridge and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-05 with total page 1017 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents students and scholars with a comprehensive overview of the fascinating world of the occult. It explores the history of Western occultism, from ancient and medieval sources via the Renaissance, right up to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and contemporary occultism. Written by a distinguished team of contributors, the essays consider key figures, beliefs and practices as well as popular culture.

Prophetic Encounters

Author : Dan McKanan
Publisher : Beacon Press
ISBN 13 : 0807013161
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis Prophetic Encounters by : Dan McKanan

Download or read book Prophetic Encounters written by Dan McKanan and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A broad, definitive history of the profound relationship between religion and movements for social change in America Though in recent years the religious right has been a powerful political force, making “religion” and “conservatism” synonymous in the minds of many, the United States has always had an active, vibrant, and influential religious Left. In every period of our history, people of faith have envisioned a society of peace and justice, and their tireless efforts have made an indelible mark on our nation’s history. In Prophetic Encounters, Dan McKanan challenges simple distinctions between “religious” and “secular” activism, showing that religious beliefs and practices have been integral to every movement promoting liberty, equality, and solidarity. From Frederick Douglass, John Brown, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the nineteenth century to Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., and Starhawk in the twentieth, American radicals have maintained a deep faith in the human capacity to transform the world. This radical faith has always been intertwined with the religious practices of Christians and Jews, pagans and Buddhists, orthodox believers and humanist heretics. Their vision and energies powered the social movements that have defined America’s progress: the abolition of slavery, feminism, the New Deal, civil rights, and others. In this groundbreaking, definitive work, McKanan treats the histories of religion and the Left as a single history, showing that American radicalism is a continuous tradition rather than a collection of disparate movements. Emphasizing the power of encounter—encounters between whites and former slaves, between the middle classes and the immigrant masses, and among activists themselves—McKanan shows that the coming together of people of different perspectives and beliefs has been transformative for centuries, uniting those whose faith is a source of activist commitment with those whose activism is a source of faith. Offering a history of the diverse religious dimensions of radical movements from the American Revolution to the present day, Prophetic Encounters invites contemporary activists to stand proudly in a tradition of prophetic power.

Enchanted Ground

Author : Sharon Hatfield
Publisher : Ohio University Press
ISBN 13 : 0804040966
Total Pages : 428 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis Enchanted Ground by : Sharon Hatfield

Download or read book Enchanted Ground written by Sharon Hatfield and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-08 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Enchanted Ground, Sharon Hatfield brings to life the true story of a nineteenth-century farmer-turned-medium, Jonathan Koons, one of thousands of mediums throughout the antebellum United States. In the hills outside Athens, Ohio, Koons built a house where it was said the dead spoke to the living, and where ancient spirits communicated the wisdom of the ages. Curious believers, in homespun and in city attire, traveled from as far as New Orleans to a remote Appalachian cabin whose marvels would rival any of P. T. Barnum’s attractions. Yet Koons’s story is much more than showmanship and sleight of hand. His enterprise, not written about in full until now, embodied the excitement and optimism of citizens breaking free from societal norms. Reform-minded dreamers were drawn to Koons’s seances as his progressive brand of religion displaced the gloomy Calvinism of previous generations. As heirs to the Second Great Awakening, which stretched from New York State to the far reaches of the Northwest Territory, the curious, the faithful, and Koons himself were part of a larger, uniquely American moment that still marks the cultural landscape today.

Deus in Machina:Religion, Technology, and the Things in Between

Author : Jeremy Stolow
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
ISBN 13 : 0823249808
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (232 download)

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Book Synopsis Deus in Machina:Religion, Technology, and the Things in Between by : Jeremy Stolow

Download or read book Deus in Machina:Religion, Technology, and the Things in Between written by Jeremy Stolow and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume explore how two domains of human experience and action--religion and technology--are implicated in each other. Contrary to commonsense understandings of both religion (as an "otherworldly" orientation) and technology (as the name for tools, techniques, and expert knowledges oriented to "this" world), the contributors to this volume challenge the grounds on which this division has been erected in the first place. What sorts of things come to light when one allows religion and technology to mingle freely? In an effort to answer that question, Deus in Machina embarks upon an interdisciplinary voyage across diverse traditions and contexts where religion and technology meet: from the design of clocks in medieval Christian Europe, to the healing power of prayer in premodern Buddhist Japan, to 19th-century Spiritualist devices for communicating with the dead, to Islamic debates about kidney dialysis in contemporary Egypt, to the work of disability activists using documentary film to reimagine Jewish kinship, to the representation of Haitian Vodou on the Internet, among other case studies. Combining rich historical and ethnographic detail with extended theoretical reflection, Deus in Machina outlines new directions for the study of religion and/as technology that will resonate across the human sciences, including religious studies, science and technology studies, communication studies, history, anthropology, and philosophy.

Handbook of Spiritualism and Channeling

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004264086
Total Pages : 519 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Handbook of Spiritualism and Channeling by :

Download or read book Handbook of Spiritualism and Channeling written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-03-31 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together scholars from different disciplines and geographies, the Brill Handbook of Spiritualism and Channeling presents modern spirit possession in a variety of contexts. Weaving together the interrelated movements of Spiritualism along with its specific Franco and Latin American currents, articles explore the nineteenth-century beginnings of séances and trance mediumship. Channelling, an heir to Spiritualism begun in the 1970s and still flourishing today, is brought into direct conversation with its predecessors with a view to showing both continuity and disjuncture as the products of new cultural and religious needs. The Brill Handbook marks the first extensive collection on these two interrelated movements and examines themes such as gender, race, performance, and technology in each instance.

Against the Gallows

Author : Paul Christian Jones
Publisher : University of Iowa Press
ISBN 13 : 1609380495
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (93 download)

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Book Synopsis Against the Gallows by : Paul Christian Jones

Download or read book Against the Gallows written by Paul Christian Jones and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2011-08-25 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Against the Gallows, Paul Christian Jones explores the intriguing cooperation of America’s writers—including major figures such as Walt Whitman, John Greenleaf Whittier, E. D. E. N. Southworth, and Herman Melville—with reformers, politicians, clergymen, and periodical editors who attempted to end the practice of capital punishment in the United States during the 1840s and 1850s. In an age of passionate reform efforts, the antigallows movement enjoyed broad popularity, waging its campaign in legislatures, pulpits, newspapers, and literary journals. Although it failed in its ultimate goal of ending hangings across the United States, the movement did achieve various improvements in the practices of the justice system, including reducing the number of capital crimes, eliminating public executions in most northern states, and abolishing capital punishment completely in three states. Although a few historians have studied the antebellum movement against capital punishment, until now very little attention has been paid to the role of America’s writers in these efforts. Jones’s study recovers the relationship between the nation’s literary figures and the movement against the death penalty, illustrating that the editors of literary journals actively encouraged and published antigallows writing, that popular crime novelists created a sympathy toward criminals that led readers to question the state’s justifications for capital punishment, that poets crafted verse that advocated strongly for Christian sympathy for criminals that coincided with an antipathy to the death penalty, and that female sentimental writers fashioned melodramatic narratives that illustrated the injustice of the hanging and reimagined the justice system itself as a sympathetic subject capable of incorporating compassion into its workings and seeing reform rather than revenge as its ends.

A Secret Society History of the Civil War

Author : Mark A. Lause
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252093593
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis A Secret Society History of the Civil War by : Mark A. Lause

Download or read book A Secret Society History of the Civil War written by Mark A. Lause and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2011-12-01 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique history of the Civil War considers the impact of nineteenth-century American secret societies on the path to as well as the course of the war. Beginning with the European secret societies that laid the groundwork for Freemasonry in the United States, Mark A. Lause analyzes how the Old World's traditions influenced various underground groups and movements in America, particularly George Lippard's Brotherhood of the Union, an American attempt to replicate the political secret societies that influenced the European revolutions of 1848. Lause traces the Brotherhood's various manifestations, the most conspicuous being the Knights of the Golden Circle (out of which developed the Ku Klux Klan), and the Confederate secret groups through which John Wilkes Booth and others attempted to undermine the Union. Lause profiles the key leaders of these organizations, with special focus on George Lippard, Hugh Forbes, and George Washington Lafayette Bickley. Antebellum secret societies ranged politically from those with progressive or even revolutionary agendas to those that pursued conservative or oppressive goals. This book shows how, in the years leading up to the Civil War, these clandestine organizations exacerbated existing sectional tensions in the United States. Lause's research indicates that the pervasive influence of secret societies may have played a part in key events such as the Freesoil movement, the beginning of the Republican party, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Lincoln's election, and the Southern secession process of 1860-1861. This exceptional study encompasses both white and African American secret society involvement, revealing the black fraternal experience in antebellum America as well as the clandestine operations that provided assistance to escaped slaves via the Underground Railroad. Unraveling these pervasive and extensive networks of power and influence, A Secret Society History of the Civil War demonstrates that antebellum secret societies played a greater role in affecting Civil War-era politics than has been previously acknowledged.

Secularism in Antebellum America

Author : John Lardas Modern
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226533239
Total Pages : 349 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (265 download)

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Book Synopsis Secularism in Antebellum America by : John Lardas Modern

Download or read book Secularism in Antebellum America written by John Lardas Modern and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-12-15 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ghosts, railroads, Sing Sing, sex machines - these are just a few of the phenomena that appear in this pioneering account of religion and society in 19th-century America.

Radio Psychics

Author : John Benedict Buescher
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476642354
Total Pages : 433 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (766 download)

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Book Synopsis Radio Psychics by : John Benedict Buescher

Download or read book Radio Psychics written by John Benedict Buescher and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When radio broadcasting began in the early 1920s, the radio was a magic box aglow with the future, drawing humanity into a new age. Some thought it would dissolve the distance between time and place, others that human minds would become transparent, one tuned to another. Performers claiming psychic powers turned radio broadcasting into a fabulous money machine. These "mentalists," born from vaudeville, circuses, sideshows, and the Spiritualist and New Thought movements of the mid-late 19th century, used the language of wireless technology to explain their ability to see the past, present, and future. Casting their mystical knowledge as a scientifically honed craft, these mentalists persuaded millions to pay for dubious advice until governmental and public pressures forced them off the air. This book is a history of over 25 performers who practiced their art behind studio microphones during the early years of radio broadcasting, from about 1920 to 1940. Here, laid out for the first time, is the tale of how they made cash rain from the heavens and harnessed the sensation of the radio in search of wealth, health, love, and success.

Architecture's Appeal

Author : Marc J. Neveu
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317688937
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (176 download)

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Book Synopsis Architecture's Appeal by : Marc J. Neveu

Download or read book Architecture's Appeal written by Marc J. Neveu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-02-11 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of previously unpublished essays from a diverse range of well-known scholars and architects builds on the architectural tradition of phenomenological hermeneutics as developed by Dalibor Veseley and Joseph Rykwert and carried on by David Leatherbarrow, Peter Carl and Alberto Pérez-Gómez. Taking an interdisciplinary approach and drawing on ideas from beyond the architectural canon, contributors including Kenneth Frampton, David Leatherbarrow, Juhani Pallasmaa, Karsten Harries, Steven Holl, Indra Kagis McEwen, Paul Emmons, and Louise Pelletier offer new insights and perspectives on questions such as the following: Given the recent fascination with all things digital and novel, what is the role of history and theory in contemporary architectural praxis? Is authentic meaning possible in a technological environment that is so global and interconnected? What is the nature and role of the architect in our shared modern world? How can these questions inform a new model of architectural praxis? Architecture's Appeal is a thought-provoking book which will inspire further scholarly inquiry and act as a basis for discussion in the wider field as well as graduate seminars in architectural theory and history.