For readers of Jill Lepore, Joseph J. Ellis, and Tony Horwitz
comes a lively, thought-provoking intellectual history of the
golden age of American utopianism—and the bold, revolutionary,
and eccentric visions for the future put forward by five of
history’s most influential utopian movements.
In the wake of the Enlightenment and the onset of industrialism,
a generation of dreamers took it upon themselves to confront the
messiness and injustice of a rapidly changing world. To our eyes,
the utopian communities that took root in America in the
nineteenth century may seem ambitious to the point of delusion,
but they attracted members willing to dedicate their lives to
creating a new social order and to asking the bold question What
should the future look like?
In Paradise Now, Chris Jennings tells the story of five
interrelated utopian movements, revealing their relevance both to
their time and to our own. Here is Mother Ann Lee, the prophet of
the Shakers, who grew up in newly industrialized Manchester,
England—and would come to build a quiet but fierce religious
tradition on the site side of the Atlantic. Even as the
society she founded spread across the United States, the Welsh
industrialist Robert Owen came to the Indiana frontier to build
an egalitarian, rationalist utopia he called the New Moral World.
A decade later, followers of the French visionary Charles Fourier
blanketed America with colonies devoted to inaugurating a new
millennium of pleasure and fraternity. Meanwhile, the French
radical Étienne Cabet sailed to Texas with hopes of establishing
a communist paradise dedicated to ideals that would be echoed in
the next century. And in New York’s Oneida Community, a brilliant
Vermonter named John Humphrey Noyes set about creating a new
society in which the human spirit could finally be perfected in
the image of God.
Over time, these movements fell apart, and the national mood
that had inspired them was drowned out by the dream of westward
expansion and the waking nightmare of the Civil War. Their most
galvanizing ideas, however, lived on, and their audacity has
influenced countless political movements since. Their stories
remain an inspiration for everyone who seeks to build a better
world, for all who ask, What should the future look like?
Praise for Paradise Now
“Uncommonly smart and beautifully written . . . a triumph of
scholarship and narration: five stand-alone community studies and
a coherent, often spellbinding history of the United States
during its tumultuous first half-century . . . Although never
less than evenhanded, and sometimes deliciously wry, Jennings
writes with obvious affection for his subjects. To read Paradise
Now is to be dazzled, humbled and occasionally flabberted by
the a of energy and talent sacrificed at utopia’s
altar.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Writing an impartial, respectful account of these
philanthropies and follies is no small task, but Mr. Jennings
largely pulls it off with in and omb. Indulgently
sympathetic to the utopian impulse in general, he tells a good
story. His explanations of the various reformist credos are
patient, thought-provoking and . . . entertaining.”—The Wall
Street Journal
“As a tour guide, Jennings is thoughtful, engaging and witty in
the right doses. . . . He makes the subject his own with fresh
eyes and a crisp narrative, rich with detail. . . . In the end,
Jennings writes, the communards’ disregard for the world as it
exists sealed their e. But in revisiting their stories, he
makes a compelling case that our present-day ‘deficit of
imagination’ could be similarly ed.”—San Francisco Chronicle
From the Hardcover edition.