Radical Spirits, Second Edition

Ann Braude teaches at the Harvard Divinity School and is co-editor of Roots of Bitterness: Documents in the Social History of American Women.

"It would be hard to imagine a book that more insightfully combined gender, social, and religious history together more perfectly than Radical Spirits. Braude still speaks powerfully to unique issues of women's creativity - spiritual as well as political - in a superb account of the controversial nineteenth-century Spiritualist movement. Braude's vivid prose and analytical clarity make an inherently fascinating story all the more compelling - a 'must read' for nineteenth-century U.S. historians whose recent scholarship only highlights the unique, blazing daring of Radical Spirits." Jon Butler, Yale University "Radical Spirits is a vitally important book. It is an original interpretation of Spiritualism that does far more than recount the narrow history of a single movement. In effect, the work recasts the history of women's rights in such a way as to show the dynamic impact of religion upon American culture, as it enabled women to become aware of their own voices in a culture that still sought to silence them... The book has ... influenced a generation of young scholars emerging into the profession ... no less than more senior social historians and scholars of religion." --Marie Griffith, Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University " ... [Radical Spirits] is a wonderful teaching book: it raises crucial questions about gender and race in relation to American religious creativity and asks students to think in new ways about religion and about women's history. My experience has been that students love reading and discussing it." --Robert Orsi, author of Thank You, St. Jude "Braude has discovered a crucial link between the early feminists and the spiritualists who so captured the American imagination during the middle of the [nineteenth] century." --Los Angeles Times "An insightful book and a delightful read." --Journal of American History "Continually rewarding." --New York Times Book Review

• Preliminary Table of Contents:List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. "Unbroken Communication between the Infinite and All Beings"2. "The Blessedness of Sinless Childhood in the World Beyond"3. "Thine for Agitation"4. The Meaning of Mediumship5. "The Body and Soul Destroying Marriage Institution"6. Mediums versus Medical men7. "No Organization Can Hold Me"ConclusionAbbreviationsNotesReferencesIndex