A Book Review

Like topsy it just growed.

That paraphrased nod towards Uncle Tom’s Cabin can be applied to this series of books. It started off small, or at least as a limited project. Then it grew. And grew.  It is still growing. That is not a criticism but singles out this book as different from the rest when it comes to Watch Tower and related history.

The two authors, Bruce Schulz and the late Rachael de Vienne, first produced a book on Nelson Barbour, the forgotten prophet. That was intended as a journal article, but it grew into a book. A follow-up, Separate Identity, was designed as a stand alone book, tracing the history of the Watch Tower Society from its pre-history with young Charles Taze Russell up to its emergence as a separate movement. That one volume has now grown into two, and a third is needed to complete the story.

This makes the books special. Had there been a commercial publisher, an editor would have been ruthless and cut them down to size. Out would have gone the details, the digressions, the multitude of footnotes and references to send obsessive researchers down other research trails. A casual reader interested in Watch Tower history has other options, but for a serious researcher the Schulz and de Vienne series fills in the gaps and rescues numerous individuals and events from obscurity. No-one else has ever done that.

Do you need to have volume one before reading volume two? Ideally it would help, but is not essential. Volume one doesn’t even get up to the first issue of Zion’s Watch Tower. The volume under review basically starts with the original Watchtower magazine, goes onto Food for Thinking Christians, and sets the scene for a worldwide witnessing work that indeed started small, but grew. It If your interest only really starts in 1879, then you can leap straight into this volume, although you will find references to the first volume in it.

The authors strive to be neither apologists nor polemicists, but even-handed, going where the evidence takes them. Like most readers this reviewer has a point of view which doesn’t always square with everything in the book, but they can be credited with a valiant effort to be fair.

If your interest has got you as far as looking up this book and reading the reviews, then takes my word for it - this has to be a book for you.

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