Utopian Communities in America, 1680-1880

In this 1951 book (revised and republished in 1966), Mark Holloway has written one of the most engaging surveys of "utopian" communities ever written, covering groups such as the Shakers, Rappites, Zoarites, New Harmony, Fourierism, Oneida, Icaria, and including chapters such as, "Utopia In Decline," and "Was it Worth While?" Holloway's observations are both insightful and sharp; such as: "The history of these experiments is one of few successes, many failures, and constantly renewed endavor. Only three or four communities have lasted longer than a hundred years." "The Anabaptists were persecuted as much for their radicalism as for their religious faith." "The Shakers believed in the bisexuality of God, manifested in the creation of male and female 'in our image,' and duplicated throughout nature in the vegetable as well as in the animal kingdom." "What we would call 'amusement' was unknown to the Shakers in their heyday." "Mormon polygamy was part of the general attack that was everywhere being made on the institution of monogamy." In John Humphrey Noyes, "All the unconscious secual desires of the past ten or twenty years had at last found a spokesman whom nothing could daunt, a tactician who drove straight through the enemy's lines of defense armed with only an ingeneous shield of his own devising." "Every observer agrees that life in the successful community was far superior to industrial or agricultural life in 'the world.'" For anyone interested in utopian communities, intentional communities, communes, ecovillages, and similar movements, this book is absolute MUST READING!

I found this book quite remarkable and well written as well as researched. Few people know the origin of such companies as Onieda Silver or the Amana corp as stemming from religious communal societies of long ago. What this book has to offer those interested in bottom up economic development is hundreds of years of results of experiments both successful and unsuccessful.

Much of America's history is dropped into what some refer to as a memory black hole. For a variety of reasons, many parts of American experimentation with lifestyle, living, and economics have been dropped into this hole, rather than celebrated. It would be interesting, if we could, to post facto test the survivability of such experiments in post-Waco America...A good, easy, bath-room compatible and memorable read.