Communal Utopias and the American Experience: Secular Communities, 1824-2000

This important study begins with America's first secular utopia at New Harmony in 1824 and traces successive utopian experiments in the United States through the following centuries. For the first time, readers will come to realize that American communalism is not a disjointed, erratic, almost ephemeral part of our past, but has been an on-going, essential part of American history. We have a communal utopian motif that sets the history of the United States apart from any other nation. The utopian communal story is just one other dimension of the Puritan concept that America was a "city upon a hill," a "beacon light" to all the world where the perfect society could be built and could flourish.

ROBERT P. SUTTON is Professor of History at Western Illinois University and a specialist in American communal utopias. He is the author of nine books and has contributed seven chapters in books on the Icarians and other utopian communities. In 1998, he received the Donald E. Pitzer Distinguished Service Award from the Communal Studies Association. He is married with six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. In 2002 Greenwood Press published his book Federalism as part of its Major Issues in American History series.