The standard work on the Amish that explores their beliefs and practice and change and resistance to change. Hostetler, who was born and raised in an Amish community, takes the reader inside Amish culture and explains the nature of Amish religious beliefs and ceremonies, community and family life, mutual-aid practices, temptations, tensions with worldly values and outsiders. (435pp. illus. index. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1993.)