![]() ![]() However, in their time, these were widely known movements, drawing thousands of participants with many thousands more following their escapades and debating their merits through the burgeoning print media of the era. You’ve no doubt heard of a couple of these groups, though maybe only in reference to furniture (Shaker) or flatware (Oneida). Paradise Now traces five key utopian movements: the Shakers, Owenites, Fourierists, Icarians, and the Oneida Community. ![]() How, after all, could fallible human nature be put to work to achieve something as slippery and subjective as perfection?īut in Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism, author Chris Jennings makes the case that the formation of utopian communities is America’s natural genre of self-criticism-or at least it was in the early nineteenth century. The word “utopia” is based on an obscure Greek pun: topos means place, but the prefix “u” is ambiguous: it can either mean “good,” or it can indicate negation: “no place.” And ever since Thomas More’s 1516 novel of that title, the idea of a perfect human place has seemed to most of us like an absurdity. Paradise Now: The Story Of American Utopianism by Chris Jennings ![]()
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