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Friends of Adin Ballou Bookstore
For more information about any of our products,
contact editor@adinballou.org.
Books
Quantity discount on orders of 3 or more books
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History of the Hopedale Community
Adin Ballou
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Catalog No. BE-10
ISBN 978-0-9816402-3-5
Publisher: Blackstone Editions
Pages: xxviii + 339
Price: $25.00
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The Hopedale Community was one of the most important and successful of the many utopian communities started in the
mid-nineteenth century United States. In History of the Hopedale Community, community leader Adin Ballou provides a detailed record
of the successes, failures, hopes, and disappointments of a small group of people attempting to live together harmoniously,
in accordance with "their ideal of what human life and human society upon the earth ought to be."
This new edition features a newly restored map of Hopedale, many explanatory notes on the text, and a table of the members,
drawn from the membership records of the community.
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Christian Non-Resistance
Adin Ballou
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Catalog No. BE-02
ISBN 978-0-9725017-1-2
Publisher: Blackstone Editions
Pages: xxxi + 190
Price: $20.00 New low price!
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In Christian Non-Resistance (1846) Adin Ballou set out his vision of a world in which nations would glory not in military
might but in "superior justice, forbearance, meekness, forgiveness, charity," and beneficent order could be maintained without violence.
Once dismissed as a relic of the naïve and sentimental optimism of pre-Civil War America, it is now recognized as
an important contribution to the theory of nonviolent resistance. Ballou's combination of the utmost moral resistance to evil
with the uninjurious physical restraint of evildoers provides a conceptually simple, flexible approach to the problem of resisting
evil without becoming evil oneself.
This edition contains the essay "Christian Non-Resistance in Extreme Cases" (1860), in which Ballou takes up a type of
challenge often put to pacifists: "Suppose a robber attacks you in some lonely place on the highway? Suppose you and your
family are attacked by a gang who design to commit rape, robbery and murder? How can the downtrodden peoples of the earth
ever gain their liberty without fighting to the death against their tyrants?"
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Buy the Kindle edition from Amazon.com
Price: $6.00
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Practical Christianity
Adin Ballou
An epitome of Practical Christian Socialism
Edited and arranged by Lynn Gordon Hughes
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Catalog No. BE-01
ISBN 978-0-9725017-0-5
Publisher: Blackstone Editions
Pages: xxix + 267
Price: $25.00
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Practical Christian Socialism (1854) was Adin Ballou's most comprehensive exposition of his fundamental principles
and their application to personal and community life, ranging from theology and political theory to marriage, child-rearing,
and a surprisingly frank discussion of sexuality.
In Practical Christianity, Ballou's 655-page treatise has been edited to eliminate the cumbersome dialogue form
in which it was originally written. All of the language is Ballou's own, and nothing is omitted except a final section
in which he compared Practical Christian Socialism to competing varieties of utopian socialism.
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Buy the Kindle edition from Amazon.com
Price: $7.50
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Hopedale Reminiscences
Childhood Memories of the Hopedale Community and the Hopedale Home School, 1841-1863
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Catalog No. BE-07
ISBN ISBN 0-9725017-4-6
Publisher: Blackstone Editions
Pages: xii + 83
Price: $10.00 New low price!
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This little book is devoted to remembering the "good old days" of living in the utopian community of Hopedale, Massachusetts
during the 1840s and 1850s. The pleasures and hardships of living in a village devoted to re-creating society in a non-violent,
cooperative and equitable way are examined, often humorously, through the eyes of its children.
Unlike their parents, these youngsters did not volunteer to live apart from the rest of the world, nor were they necessarily
passionate advocates of the ideals of their elders. In spite of this, living in an atmosphere both earnest and loving,
they had the time of their lives.
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To Live a Truer Life
Written by Lynn Gordon Hughes
Illustrated by Lindro (Linda Rogers)
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Catalog No. BE-03
ISBN 978-0-9725017-2-9
Publisher: Blackstone Editions
Pages: 32
Hard cover with dust jacket
Price: $10.00
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Hopedale, Massachusetts in 1855 is a town unlike any other. Everyone who lives there has promised never to kill, hate, or
hurt another human being - not even their worst enemy. There are no rich people and no poor people. Everyone has a job to do,
and everyone shares.
This picture book presents the Hopedale Community through the eyes of one if its youngest members, eight-year-old Susie Thwing.
Her job is to deliver the mail to everyone in Hopedale and sell the special pink Hopedale Penny Post stamps. In this book,
young readers can join Susie as she makes her rounds and shows what makes her town so special.
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Pamphlets
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On Non-Resistance
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Catalog No. FAB-01
Pages: 28
Price: $3.00
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This pamphlet contains two of Adin Ballou's most important short works on Christian Non-Resistance, "Learn to Discriminate" and
"Christian Non-Resistance in Extreme Cases."
In "Learn to Discriminate," Ballou addresses common misconceptions about his form of pacifism. In a few short pages he explains
the difference "between no resistance of evil at all, and Non-Resistance of evil with evil... between physical force and injurious
force... between law and right... between obedience and submission to goverment."
In "Christian Non-Resistance in Extreme Cases" Ballou argues that, even in "extreme cases," non-resistance "is best
for us, best for our offending fellow creatures, and best for all mankind."
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On Race and Slavery
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Catalog No. FAB-02
Pages: 20
Price: $3.00
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Contents:
"Call to Abolitionism" from The Autobiography of Adin Ballou
"The Evils of Slavery and Racism" from Discourse on the Subject of American Slavery, July 4, 1837
"Strange as it may seem to most of my readers, I was more than thirty years of age before the thought entered my mind that
I was in any way responsible for chattel slavery in my country... The wrongs, abominations, and outrages of slavery were out of my
sight and so out of my mind." In this excerpt from his autobiography, Ballou tells how he was converted to the abolitionist cause,
and how his life changed when he began to preach against slavery.
Once his eyes were opened to the evils of slavery, Ballou became an eloquent and passionate voice not only against slavery,
but against the racism that allowed so many Americans to accept it with equanimity. In his Fourth of July address in 1837,
he described the horrors of slavery, proposed specific steps to be taken to admit African Americans to full citizenship, and
answered some common objections to immediate emancipation. To those who would send free blacks to "colonize" Africa, he retorted,
"They are as much in their own country as we are. Their ancestors came from Africa, ours from Europe; and here we are in the
red man's country. If there is to be any shipping off without consent, we had better let the Indian say who shall be sent home."
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Capital Punishment and The Superiority of Moral Power over Political Power
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Catalog No. FAB-03
Pages: 20
Price: $3.00
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In "Capital Punishment: Reasons for Immediate Abolition," Ballou asks, "To whom will the putting to death of the criminal do
any good?" He answers: "It will preserve no one's life, that could not just as surely be preserved by the judicious confinement
of the criminal. It will not help God's administration of justice. It will not restore the murdered person to life. It will give
no comfort to the murdered one's surviving friends, unless they are depraved enough to find comfort in retaliation... Many have
been put to death who were afterwards ascertained beyond doubt to be innocent. Then their judges and executioners would have given
worlds for the power to reverse the fatal sentence. But there was no remedy - no reparation."
In the second of the essays in this pamphlet, Ballou contrasts moral power, "the power which operates on the affections,
passions, reason, and moral sentiments of mankind, and thereby controls them without physical force," with political power, the
power of the state which rests ultimately on the recourse to coercive force.
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