University Libraries Promotion and Tenure Recognition

Chautauqua stands as a unique slice of United States' heritage, education, and culture. Its religious rootedness provides an alternative setting--as it has since its 1874 foundation--in which people of all ages can retreat from day-to-day life just long enough to recharge their intellectual engines while doing his or her own thing within a climate of believers and religious leaders.

Jeffrey Simpson's Chautauqua: An American Utopia encapsulates, in words and pictures, myriad meanings of "Chautauqua" that underlie my family's annual pilgrimage to this gem of Americana. I hope that the presence and regular use of Simpson's general overview of Chautauqua by Penn State University library readers will lure other families to investigate this unique community and to begin their own Chautauqua experiences.