A Review: NONVIOLENCE IN AMERICA edited by Staughton & Alice Lynd

First, I need to mention that this is a review of the Third Edition of NONVIOLENCE IN AMERICA, edited by Staughton and Alice Lynd. It also bears acknowledging that Staughton and Alice Lynd have been pillars within the social justice/nonviolence communities for over fifty years.

There is probably no other couple like the Lynds who are so deeply and personally qualified to edit such a collection.

There have been comparisons of the Lynd's book with Howard Zinn's A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. It's fair, but not entirely accurate. The chief similarity is that both books bite off huge chunks of history (Zinn's begins circa the 1400s, while the Lynd's begins about two hundred years later).

The chief difference is that Zinn's book is written, for the most part, by Zinn. With the exception of the introduction, everything else in NONVIOLENCE IN AMERICA was written by other folks.

All told, NONVIOLENCE IN AMERICA contains 56 different documents and it's an excellent testimony to the Lynd's faithful pursuit of the topic.

One of the difficulties, of course, in reviewing this sort of collection, is that you could ask ten different readers their opinion and you're guaranteed to get ten entirely different responses.

Personally, I found Ammon Hennacy's "Atlanta Prison 1917, "David Dillinger's "From Yale to Jail," Wilmer Young's "Visible Witness," Robert Moses' "Message From Jail," Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham City Jail," Shelley Douglas', "A World Where Abortion is Unthinkable" and Helen Prejean's "Dead Man Walking" to be the most moving.

But no matter what your own favorite(s) in this collection, NONVIOLENCE IN AMERICA presents an essential piece of US history. The Lynds are to be commended for being so diligent in their research. They are even more to be commended and honored for their personal commitment to social justice. 

For more information on NONVIOLENCE IN AMERICA click here.