American Utopias (American Classics)
Originally published as The Communistic Societies of the United StatesWhen this book was first published in 1875, the major utopian communities in America, including the Shakers, the Harmonists, the Wallington and Oneida Perfectionists, the Aurora and Bethel Communities, the Bishop Hill Colony, and others, were still flourishing enterprises.  Charles Nordhoff (1830-1901), the noted journalist who was grandfather of the co-author of Mutiny on the Bounty undertook to visit the major communities in order to record for this curious readers each society's history, beliefs, and daily life.As Robert Fogarty points out in his illuminating foreword to this new edition of Nordhoff's most famous book, its author held the view -- unusual for his time -- that utopian communities were "within the American tradition rather than in opposition to it."  Nordhoff's faithful descriptions and his thoughtful concluding essay, "A Comparative View of the Customs and Practices of American Communes" -- along with Dr. Fogarty's afterword covering utopian communities since Nordhoff's day -- make this new edition a valuable resource and entertaining reading for late-20th-century Americans.Charles Nordhoff enjoyed a distinguished career as journalist and author.  An editor for Harper & Brothers, managing editor of the New York Evening Post, and later Washington correspondent of the New York Herald, he wrote numerous books -- about seafaring, political and social issues of his day, and his travels in California and elsewhere.Robert S. Fogarty, professor of history at Antioch College and editor of The Antioch Review, is author of All Things New (University of Chicago Press), and The Righteous Remnant (Kent State University Press).