The author pictured with Free Library of Philadelphia copies of various books discussed in The Word in the Wilderness, including the Luther Bible, Güldene Aepffel in Silbern Schalen, the Martyrer Spiegel printed at Ephrata, the Paradisisches Wunder-Spiel, also printed at Ephrata; and Johan Arndt’s Sechs Bücher vom wahren Christenthum.
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Alexander Lawrence Ames is the author of The Word in the Wilderness: Popular Piety and the Manuscript Arts in Early Pennsylvania and the host of Cloister Talk: The Pennsylvania German Material Texts Podcast. Ames is a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based historian, curator, and bibliophile. He holds an M.A. in American material culture and a Ph.D. in history of American civilization and museum studies from the University of Delaware and works as Director of Outreach & Engagement at the Rosenbach Museum & Library, an historic house museum and special collections library affiliated with the Free Library of Philadelphia. His scholarly interests focus on book history, material culture, and religious and intellectual life in early America. Ames's research has been published in scholarly journals including Winterthur Portfolio, The Mennonite Quarterly Review, and Libraries: Culture, History, and Society. He has curated exhibitions of rare books and manuscripts including Grolier Club Bookplates, Past and Present (The Grolier Club, 2016-2017), American Voyager: Herman Melville at 200 (the Rosenbach, 2019-2020), Voyages by Road and Sea: Philadelphia Perspectives on Walt Whitman and Herman Melville (Free Library of Philadelphia, 2019-2020), and Succession: Why Presidential History Matters Now (the Rosenbach, 2023).
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