Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism

Jennings reexamines America’s 19th-century utopian projects, viewing them as a response to growing industry and competition in post-Enlightenment Europe, in this thoughtful history. He smartly organizes the book into five sections, each covering a major movement in the “Edenic void” of America: Shakers, New Harmony Owenists, Fourierists, Icarians, and the Perfectionists of the Oneida Community. These movements had many similarities—doing away with property and the family (except the Icarians), preaching cooperation, and focusing on bettering their members—while their fascinating differences owed much to the peculiarities of their founders’ motivating ideologies. Jennings dispels the pastoral image of an easy existence: labor was almost uniformly difficult and money was a consistent problem. But for many, utopian life also had its upsides: attention to education, better diets, fair wages, and sexual liberation were all components of these movements. Perhaps their greatest achievement was gender equality: women found equal rights in many of these communities, and many stepped outside the domestic sphere that confined many of America’s women. Though utopians were still limited in their thinking (particularly in racial terms), Jennings convincingly argues that they were not motivated by “a surfeit of optimism,” but were inspired to find a better society because of a cynical view of the direction that the world around them was heading in. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM. (Jan.)