We’ll soon be having a Q-and-A with Jim Cates, author of Serving the Amish: A Cultural Guide for Professionals, a new book first mentioned here last month.

Jim is a clinical psychologist with extensive experience working with the Amish in northern and northeastern Indiana.

Today is your chance to ask questions of Jim, about the book and anything related to it. We’ll choose some of them to use in the Q-and-A.

As a bonus, if you ask a question, you’ll get an additional entry when we give away a copy of Serving the Amish. I haven’t nailed it down with Jim yet, but I expect we’ll run the Q-and-A and giveaway sometime next week.

From the book description:

Serving The Amish James CatesServing the Amish is a targeted guide for professionals who care for or interact with Plain people: doctors, nurses, law enforcement officers, judges, social workers, psychotherapists, and addiction counselors, among others. For these professionals, knowing the “what” of Amish life is not enough. They must go deeper, understanding the “why”—the ideologies that both drive and bind this community in a system of beliefs that seems alien to those who embrace the technological and social turbulence of the twenty-first century.

Donald Kraybill on Serving the Amish

We’ve also got another video from Jim’s interview series, available on the Serving the Amish website.

In the video below, Jim talks to Young Center series editor Donald Kraybill, who speaks candidly about how he does research, the Amish as an oral culture, ideas for outsiders working with the Amish, the importance of empathy, and the significance of the Amish extended family.

It’s quite an interesting discussion. This is Part 1 of 3. The rest you can find on the site.

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