This sweeping book tells about the development of Friends General Conference up to 1950, primarily through the lens of the Conferences. One central motif is that these biennial gatherings renewed the courage and resolve of Friends to face the daunting disappointments of the first half of the 20th century. Modernity promised great advances in human society and no group was more confident of progress than FGC Friends at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Through the conferences, the melancholy of two world wars, the capitalist debacle of the Great Depression, and the stubborn blights of American racism were turned into the spleen of renewed hope and activism, as Friends gathered together to learn, network, and find new reasons for hope. Gwyn characterizes the first fifty years of the conferences as FGC's "heroic era." A Gathering of Spirits will help FGC Friends discover the deeper roots of a tradition they continue to this day and to will draw renewed courage