John H. Vincent, a Methodist minister, and Lewis Miller, an inventor and businessman, gathered Sunday school teachers at the lake for a summer assembly. It became a movement because it answered a hunger that was bigger than its founders probably imagined. In towns across the country, especially in places far from cities and universities, people wanted a way to make sense of a nation changing quickly. If you want to understand why Chautauqua mattered, you have to understand the country it met. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between.