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By Bertha M.H. Shambaugh.
The sincerity of her thoughts approaches a poetical charm and quality which has not been equaled or duplicated by any other writings about Amana.

This rare book tells about life in the Amana Colonies in Iowa at the turn of the century. A warm, accurate account, it is the only one of its kind, written during the religious-communal era of the Amana people. This is a facsimile of the 1908 book.

This book is published in cooperation with the Museum of Amana History and the State Historical Society of Iowa.  This book is back in print with new pictures added throughout the book. Articles added at the end of the book include, "The Life of Bertha Shambaugh," by Mary Bennett, Archivist, State Historical Society of Iowa, and an epilogue by Lanny Haldy, Executive Director, Amana Heritage Society.

Paperback, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 ", 424 pages. 58 illustrations/photographs. ISBN 978-1932043631

Revised and expanded.
Over 100 recipes. Rare, historic photographs. Recipes for the traditional shower of wedding cakes and other customs. The Amanas were settled in Iowa by German-speaking members of the Community of True Inspiration seeking religious freedom in the 19th century. Today, the seven historic villages that make up the Amanas are one of the state's major tourist attractions.
Perfect bound, 6 x 9", 128 pages. ISBN 1-932043-11-X

Originally there were approximately 200,000 barns built in Iowa. Now it is estimated that only 60,000 barns remain, with another 1,000 or more barns disappearing from Iowas landscape annually. This book preserves in print Eastern Iowa''s historic barns built from 1839 to 1955 with over 250 photographs from the authors research, the first ever Amana Colonies barn tour, the Johnson County Historical Society barn tour, and the Iowa Barn Foundations annual barn tour. Eight Iowa counties and twenty rural cities are covered. Former president Hoover lived as a youth five miles from one of the featured octagonal barns when it was built in 1883. This barns aesthetic beauty is so inspiring that people from other countries come to visit this barn each year to see the unusual bell shaped roof, a suspended staircase, a railway car, and laminated interior ribs. It may be the only barn built with a bell shaped roof and is thought to be the oldest surviving barn built of its kind in the U. S.
Perfect bound. 216 pages. 8-1/2 x 11" Black and white format.
Written and photographed by Deb Schense.
ISBN-13: 978-1430302735 ISBN-10: 1430302739

Originally there were approximately 200,000 barns built in Iowa. Now it is estimated that only 60,000 barns remain, with another 1,000 or more barns disappearing from Iowa's landscape annually. This book preserves in print Eastern Iowa''s historic barns built from 1839 to 1955 with over 175 photographs from the authors research, the first ever Amana Colonies barn tour, the Johnson County Historical Society barn tour, and the Iowa Barn Foundations annual barn tour. Eight Iowa counties and 20 rural cities are covered. Former president Hoover was living as a youth five miles from one of the featured octagonal barns when it was built in 1883. This barns aesthetic beauty is so inspiring that people from other countries come to visit this barn each year to see the unusual bell shaped roof, a suspended staircase, a railway car, and laminated interior ribs. It may be the only barn built with a bell shaped roof and is thought to be the oldest surviving barn built of its kind in the U. S.
Perfect bound. 112 pages. 8-1/2 x 11" Color format.
Written and photographed by Deb Schense.
ISBN: 978-1430302742 ISBN-10: 1430302747

By Lori Erickson
The stories related in this book will intrigue you. Some may well be the result of an over-active imagination or wishful thinking, but can they all be dismisssed as fiction? You may never look at these peaceful village in the same way again! With an historical backround of the Amana Colonies.
8.2 x 5.3 x 0.5". 172 pages. ISBN 1-8784-8808-2

Founded as a communal society in 1855 by German Pietists, the seven villages of Iowa's Amana Colonies make up a community whose crafts, architecture, and institutions reflect and to an extent perpetuate the German heritage of earlier residents. In this intriguing blend of sociolinguistic research and stories from Colonists both past and present, Philip Webber examines the rich cultural and linguistic traditions of the Amanas.

Although the Colonies are open to the outside world, particularly after the Great Change of 1932, many distinctive vestiges of earlier lifeways survive, including the local variety of German known by its speakers as Kolonie-Deutsch. Drawing upon interviews with more than fifty Amana-German speakers in 1989 and 1990, Webber explores the nuances of this home-grown German, signaling the development of local microdialects, the changing pattern in the use of German in the Colonies, and the reciprocal influence of English and German on residents' speech. By letting his sources tell their own stories of earlier days, in which the common message seems to be wir haben fun gehabt or we had fun working together, he illuminates the history and unique qualities of each Colony through the prism of language study.

Webber's introduction to this paperback edition provides an up-to-date itinerary for visitors to the Colonies, information about recent publications on Amana history and culture, and an overview of expanded research opportunities for language study and historical inquiry. The result is an informative and engaging study that will be appreciated by linguists, anthropologists, and historians as well as by general readers interested in these historic villages.

Philip Webber is a professor of German and linguistics at Central College in Pella, Iowa, where he has taught since 1976. He is also the author of Pella Dutch: The Portrait of a Language and Its Use by One of Iowa's Ethnic Communities and Zoar in the Civil War.

158 pages, 18 photos, 1 map, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches, 2009
$22.95 paper, 1-58729-830-9, 978-1-58729-830-1

Butterfly and zinnias, High Amana, Iowa 2" x 3"magnet

©Joan Liffring-Zug Bourret photo

White tailed deer by the Amana Colonies 2" x 3" magnet

©David Heusinkveld

Amana Colonies water lily on Lily Lake. 2" x 3" magnet

Also available as a postcard. Wholesale rates available.

©David Heusinkveld photo

Amana Canada geese magnet. 2" x 3"

Parents are protecting their young.

©David Heusinkveld

Spring in the Amana Colonies 2" x 3"magnet

©Joan Liffring-Zug Bourret photo

South Amana tulips 2" x 3"magnet

©Joan Liffring-Zug Bourret photo

Tiger Lilies 2" x 3"

©David Heusinkveld photo

Price Creek bluebells 2" x 3" magnet

©David Heusinkveld photo

A wonderful selection of photographs and an insightful account of one of America's great utopian societies. All those interested in photography and American history will find this book an invaluable addition to their library. Sylvia Wolf, Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography, Whitney Museum of American Art
More than 100 years ago, Bertha Shambaugh set out to photograph the Amana Colonies, the utopian religious community twenty miles northwest of Iowa City. Shambaugh brought to her project a clear social mission to tell the world mired in the upheavals of the 1890s about a kinder way of life. She easily won the trust of the community and began publishing photographs and articles about the society she so admired. Soon after, several Amana members ignored their community's prohibition on photography and took up cameras to record the people and events around them.
Picturing Utopia: Bertha Shambaugh and the Amana Photographers celebrates their artistic vision and offers a rare glimpse into a nineteenth-century religious utopia. Abigail Foerstner brings together this stunning collection of photographs along with the stories of the photographers who took them. Together the pictures and text fill in an untold chapter of American photographic history and provide an insider's view of life in Amana.
The photographs, preserved on glass plate negatives, provide an unbroken photographic record beginning with Shambaugh's work in the 1890s and continuing through the Colonies' transition to mainstream American life with the Great Change in 1932.
Abigail Foerstner has written hundreds of articles on art and photography for the Chicago Tribune, North Shore magazine, and other publications. She lives with her family in Wilmette, Illinois. Her great uncle, William Foerstner, was one of the Amana photographers whose work is included in the book. While researching this project, Foerstner helped to recover more than a thousand glass plates and other photographic negatives now preserved at the Museum of Amana History.
166 pages, 81 photos, 8 3/4 x 8 5/8 inches, 2000.
A Bur Oak Book Series.
By Abigail Foerstner

Butterfly and zinnias, High Amana, Iowa 4" x 6" postcard

©Joan Liffring-Zug Bourret photo

Amana Colonies water lily on Lily Lake. 4" x 6" postcard

Also available as a postcard. Wholesale rates available.

©David Heusinkveld photo

Spring in the Amana Colonies 4" x 6" postcard

©Joan Liffring-Zug Bourret photo

Seasons of Plenty provides colorful descriptions, folk stories, appealing photgraphs and illustrations, excerpts from journals and ledgers, recipes for good food like savory dumpling soup, mashed potatoes with browned bread crumbs, Sauerbraten, and feather light apple fritters.
Written by Emilie Hoppe and Illustrated by Rachel Ehrman. From the Bur Oak Books Series. 236 pages, 8 x 10, 1998.
ISBN: 1-58729-564-4
ISBN: 978-1-58729-564-5