Kraybill, Donald B. The Riddle of Amish Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.
In The Riddle of Amish Culture, Donald Kraybill illustrates how one Amish community in Lancaster, Pennsylvania not only successfully survives but prospers amidst the urban sprawl surrounding their commuity. Kraybill's thesis is that Amish cultural authenticity and survival results from carefully determined tactics combining acceptance, compromise, and resistance. He uses the "riddle" as the form for conveying his understanding of Amish culture and lifeways to his readers. He argues that many outsiders view Amish life as a mystery, and things which may seem inconsistent and contradictory to the moderns (people living outside the Amish culture) are for the Amish practical ways of maintaining some degree of continuation in this traditional system in an area that threatens to take over their existence with shopping malls, hotels, and restaurants. In the preface, Kraybill poses a number of questions that help to shape his inquiry, including some which "reverse" the process and make the Amish the questioners of modern society. [J. Bixler]