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Peace is Everybody's Business : Half a Century of Peace Education with Elizabeth Evans Baker

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THIS IS MY FINAL REVISED VERSION OF THIE REVIEW. SORRY FOR THE PREVIOUS ATTEMPT. jack troy <jgaylordt@yahoo.com> wrote: Elizabeth Evans Baker's Quest for Peace Reviewer: jack troy from Huntingdon, PA USA

Elizabeth Evans Baker (1902-1990) led a full life as First Lady at Ohio University, founder of the Monomoy Theatre on Cape Cod, as an actress, mother, patron of the arts, and poet, but her inner tuning-fork vibrated for the cause of peace. She struggled with an ancient human dilemma - how to discover and use moral imagination as an alternative to violence in resolving conflicts. Because she and her husband were in a position to put their ideals into action, they were instrumental in funding peace studies programs at a number of colleges, but Elizabeth was the driving force, as Marta Daniels documents in her well-organized, and clearly-written book. Elizabeth Baker was in a position to do something about the sad fact that America has a War College, but no Peace College. Her response was not only personal (as Daniels shows, through excerpts from EEB's diaries), but far-reaching, since she helped fund and organize peace-studies programs devoted to what has become known as "irenology" - the systematic, interdisciplinary study of the causes of war and the conditions of peace. Her dedication helped establish and enlarge an awareness that has materialized so that nearly 200 U. S. colleges now offer courses and undergraduate degree-granting and certificate-granting Peace Studies programs. As I read this book I was struck by the degree to which Mrs. Baker's idealism found pragmatic expression with enduring effects, as authenticated by her persistence for 20 years to make possible Maya Lin's Peace Chapel at Juniata College in central Pennsylvania. Visiting the site helps me realize what this book documents: that art and peace can be as linked in locale as they were in the mind and spirit of Elizabeth Evans Baker.

Peace is Everybody's Business focuses on the peace making efforts of Elizabeth Baker and her husband, peace advocates and educators who proved pioneers in the field in the last part of the 20th century. Readers receive both an excellent biography of Baker and a focus on the establishment of peace studies in higher education. The latter is especially important as few books have examined this process.