The Children of Prosperity: Thirteen Modern American Communes

Hugh Gardner wrote this book in 1978, after visiting thirty American communes in Colorado, New Mexico, California, and Oregon. He surveys thirteen of these communities in this book, including Drop City; the Lama Foundation; LILA; Morning Star; Maharaj Ashram; Wheeler Ranch; Ananda, and others. Gardner includes prefatory and concluding chapters with his own observations, such as: "But a social movement of this scale cannot be ignored even if it has become moribund, and the fact is that many communal groups established in the 1960s still survive today." (Remember that he wrote this in 1978.) He sums up in the book's Preface, "As representatives of my generation, the people I have called 'the children of prosperity' included some of the best and some of the most disturbed. What they all had in common, though, was the highest human aspiration: to be free. I trust that history will remember their efforts to usher in the New Age in one great leap." This book will be of interest to those interested in intentional communites, communes, utopian societies, spiritual communities, ecovillages, and similar movements.