About the Book

Yes, it is possible to create a society where there are no rich or poor, where children and elderly are welcome, where no one lives alone. Meet one hundred individuals from diverse backgrounds who ventured everything to build a life together where everyone belongs and everyone can contribute. A cross-section of the Bruderhof community’s international and intergenerational membership, they pooled their income, possessions, talents, and energy to take care of one another and reach out to others.

As the community marks its first hundred years, hear Bruderhof members past and present talk about why they have chosen this radical way of life and share insights gleaned along the way. With photography by British photojournalist Danny Burrows, this book celebrates what is possible when people take a leap of faith and dare a change. It will inspire anyone working to build a more just, peaceful, and sustainable future.

Book Trailer

Praise

This beautifully produced book, sure to draw in the spiritually curious, is a centenary celebration of the Bruderhof, told via testimonials by members from communities around the world.... The accounts all share a sense of having come home, and of finding peace in not having to prove one's worth or achieve material success. Photographs are vivid and beautifully composed; some pop with vitality; others are respectful windows into another world. A timeline of Bruderhof history and a world map of their communities complete this lovely book.

Booklist

This book belongs in every church library and on the coffee tables, or their equivalents, of anyone in the world thirsty for examples of wholesome, peaceful, and beneficial living.

Englewood Review

As our modern life grows seemingly more fragmented and alienated, these portraits offer an alternative. Many share similar stories of feeling isolated, a “desperate emptiness,” before they joined the Bruderhof community... Life together, by contrast, presents a kind of wholeness. This book speaks to those longing for wholeness, especially challenging the church to take up God’s call to live peaceably with all men.

First Things

Instead of keeping up with the Joneses, what about settling in with them, living life with them, sharing bread with them—along with their joys and pains? This is what peering through this window into the life of the Bruderhof makes me wonder. It is possible to have a different orientation towards our children, our homes, our material goods, our neighbors—to be driven less by meritocratic competition and more by “inconvenient hospitality” that prizes substance over appearance, sacrificial love over its feel-good counterfeit.

Amber Lapp, Institute for Family Studies

This full sized coffee-table style volume is a delight to browse through and an impressively informative, beautifully illustrated, inspired, and inspiring history that is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, community, and academic library collections.

Midwest Book Review

Another Life Is Possible tells the story of the Bruderhof and its communities today in realistic photography by Danny Burrows, with narrative by Clare Stober and autobiographical statements … from a wide variety of backgrounds: a Mexican American, a former UCC pastor, an Iraqi refugee, a prominent Philadelphia Quaker, a man with epilepsy and a woman with chronic pain, a gardener or ten, a single mother, a Buddhist traveling in Sri Lanka, and a video game enthusiast. The book is an incredibly good portrait of lives lived well in great intention and humility undertaken within a community as a vessel for the Holy Spirit.

Richard Mammana, Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations, The Episcopal Church

Celebrating a century of Christian communal living, this oversized volume is filled with photo-essays describing the lives and contributions of past and present residents of the Bruderhof. . . . Photographer Danny Burrows illustrates ten chapters with images of society participants organized by the goals of this movement . . . showing how they work for a purpose, seek peace, share their faith, practice charity, and work together in sickness and health. . . . A laudable centennial presentation for this community that also serves to introduce this group to the general public.

San Fransisco Book Review

This book is about the Bruderhof, a celebration of struggles and endurance over 100 years of a remarkable communal movement. All the stories are interesting; some are very moving indeed. This is a very human portrait of what life is like living in community... The photography by Danny Burrows is breath-taking, fun, and often poignant.

Peace News, UK

Tablet of Contents

  1. What Money Can’t Buy
  2. Working for a Purpose
  3. Building Justice
  4. Seeking and Making Peace
  5. Finding and Sharing Faith
  6. Looking for Freedom
  7. Children and Education
  8. In Sickness and in Health
  9. What about Technology?
  10. From Isolation to Community