11/15/2008

The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition

As I mentioned in my last post, the 11/5/08 issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly has a review of a book about a famous Quaker by a contemporary Quaker.

The book is called The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition.

The title of the alumni magazine article is, "Decoding an early abolitionist: Thomas P. Slaughter *83 pens biography of tailor and preacher John Woolman." You can read it here.

Here's a quote from the book review:
Slaughter, a Quaker himself, delved back into Journal to make sense of this quiet revolutionary. The result is The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition, published by Hill and Wang in September.

From the scant threads in Journal, Slaughter has provided a deeper understanding of Woolman by tracking thinkers who probably influenced him, from John Locke to Ben Franklin. Slaughter examines the source of Woolman’s convictions by employing a type of psychological excavation he learned at Princeton, where mentors such as Lawrence Stone and Natalie Davis were “interested in the workings of people’s heads,” says Slaughter.
By the way, the asterisk next to his name indicates Slaughter received a graduate degree from Princeton in 1983. Undergraduates get an apostrophe.

The publisher's page for the book is right here.

4 comments:

Jeanne said...

I saw a bit in The New Yorker about this book and couldn't help but wonder if the author was Quaker.

And thanks for the * translation. Do all schools do that, or just Princeton? And how did you come by this information.

Jeanne said...

Here's a link to the New Yorker piece

Martin Kelley said...

I got a review copy of it sitting by my desk but haven't gotten around to giving it more than a quick skim. It didn't excite me as much as I'd like. Maybe I'll try to give it a go and review.

Chris M. said...

@Jeanne: Thank you for the link! Robin showed me that it's listed in the Quaker Books catalog, too.

As for the asterisk, I don't know if all schools do that. I don't know how I learned it. Maybe it's something they explain to you in freshman orientation, or the student newspaper says something in the first week of school. Then it just becomes part of the "lore" that goes with the Establishment institution it is.