This elaborate book explores Quakerism, its legacy, and its relevance for Gandhian research. The topics covered here include the historical circumstances, conditions, and thought that led to the birth of Quakerism; the seeds and history of the movement; the themes, principles, and practices of the sect; and the aid, change, reform, and conciliation efforts Quakers made to make people, communities, and nations more tolerant, problem-free, and united. As such, the book will appeal to scholars, planners, policy-makers, and practitioners concerned with the boundaries of liberties, freedoms, pacifism, peace, and justice across people, communities, and nations.

Early feminist pioneers contributed much to the functioning and reform of society, including making women’s status and privileges equal to those of men. However, we still do not know enough about their efforts, strategies, sacrifices, and attainments. As such, through a focus on the lives and contributions of eight early female pioneers of England and America from the seventeenth century to the early twentieth century, this book helps to fill this gap. Among these women were religious and educational reformers, political activists, social advocates, abolitionists, feminists, community organizers, pacifists, internationalists, and historians. These women noticed many injustices done to their kind by men and society over the centuries and took brave actions at great personal costs to provide remedies. Their respective backgrounds and interests were different, but all of them desired more protection and the welfare of vulnerable populations nationally and internationally. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in many fields, and can also be adopted as a textbook in colleges and universities.

This book focuses on the contributions of William Penn (a Quaker) in sowing some seeds of liberty, justice, peace, and democracy in early America, which later became the basis of the 13 English colonies seeking freedom from English rule and the writing of the US constitution. The work explores Europe and America during the Enlightenment in the late sixteenth century and the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These were times, however, when discrimination and persecution were common due to prevalent religious and political bigotries. Under those circumstances, Penn dared to bring relief to the suffering people by providing them with a safe and secure haven where liberty, justice, peace, and democracy ruled, and he was the first to do that. The book will be useful to those reformers, practitioners, administrators, and scholars engaged in the areas of political studies, sociological studies, ethics, moral studies, religious and justice studies, peace studies, historical and development studies, social welfare and social work studies, and reform movements.

This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.