Another Life Is Possible

Reviews / Votes

The Bruderhof Christian movement shares similarities to groups like the Amish and Mennonites. Bruderhof community members live quiet lives, serving God. The fact that they eschew many of the trappings of modern life makes them endlessly fascinating to the outside world. This beautifully produced book, sure to draw in the spiritually curious, is a centenary celebration of the Bruderhof, told via testimonials by members from communities around the world. Some members, like Dorothy, have grown up within the Bruderhof; others, like Quaker Tom, came from similar traditions. Some people, like Josef, come from non-Christian faiths, and some, like Brian, step out of the Bruderhof for a while and return later, always welcomed back. The accounts all share a sense of having come home, and of finding peace in not having to prove one's worth or achieve material success. Photographs are vivid and beautifully composed; some pop with vitality; others are respectful windows into another world. A timeline of Bruderhof history and a world map of their communities complete this lovely book. -Booklist

Celebrating a century of Christian communal living, this oversized volume is filled with photo-essays describing the lives and contributions of past and present residents of the Bruderhof. . . . Photographer Danny Burrows illustrates ten chapters with images of society participants organized by the goals of this movement . . . showing how they work for a purpose, seek peace, share their faith, practice charity, and work together in sickness and health. . . . A laudable centennial presentation for this community that also serves to introduce this group to the general public. -San Francisco Book Review

This full sized coffee-table style volume is a delight to browse through and an impressively informative, beautifully illustrated, inspired, and inspiring history that is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, community, and academic library collections. -Midwest Book Review This book belongs in every church library and on the coffee tables, or their equivalents, of anyone in the world thirsty for examples of wholesome, peaceful, and beneficial living. - Englewood Review Instead of keeping up with the Joneses, what about settling in with them, living life with them, sharing bread with them-along with their joys and pains? This is what peering through this window into the life of the Bruderhof makes me wonder. It is possible to have a different orientation towards our children, our homes, our material goods, our neighbors-to be driven less by meritocratic competition and more by "inconvenient hospitality" that prizes substance over appearance, sacrificial love over its feel-good counterfeit. -Amber Lapp, Institute for Family Studies Another Life Is Possible tells the story of the Bruderhof and its communities today in realistic photography by Danny Burrows, with narrative by Clare Stober and autobiographical statements ... from a wide variety of backgrounds: a Mexican American, a former UCC pastor, an Iraqi refugee, a prominent Philadelphia Quaker, a man with epilepsy and a woman with chronic pain, a gardener or ten, a single mother, a Buddhist traveling in Sri Lanka, and a video game enthusiast. The book is an incredibly good portrait of lives lived well in great intention and humility undertaken within a community as a vessel for the Holy Spirit. -Richard Mammana, Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations, The Episcopal Church