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Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism
Ebook Download Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism
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Review
“Uncommonly smart and beautifully written . . . [Chris] Jennings’s sure grasp never falters. The result is 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 flabbergasted by the amount of energy and talent sacrificed at utopia’s altar. But then, as Jennings so memorably puts it, ‘Anyone nuts enough to try building heaven on earth is bound for a hell of his own making.’ ”—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 insight and aplomb. 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“Thoughtful, measured, and surprisingly relevant.”—Chicago Tribune “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 fate. But in revisiting their stories, he makes a compelling case that our present-day ‘deficit of imagination’ could be similarly fated.”—San Francisco Chronicle“Chris Jennings is a natural storyteller, and his Paradise Now, a five-part chronicle of America’s nineteenth-century utopian dreamers and doers, is the most clear-eyed, sympathetic, and inspiring account I’ve read of this vital chapter in American history in decades. What sort of future did they want? The Shakers, Owenites, Fourierists, Icarians, and Oneidans asked and answered the question, each group in its own way. Chris Jennings prods his readers to ask the question again—for ourselves.”—Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life “Jennings knows how to tell a story, and has the intellectual range to recover both the weirdness and wisdom of America’s brief bout with utopian illusions and ideals.”—Joseph J. Ellis, author of The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783–1789 “In a perfect world, work will be irresistibly pleasurable. Women will have equal rights. Money and property will be shared, as will spouses. Or maybe sex won’t be allowed at all? Even better! And once the ice caps melt, the sea will taste like lemonade. Bliss! With good humor, a lively style, and a deep knowledge of the historical scholarship, Chris Jennings tells the goofy, heartbreaking tale of nineteenth-century Americans who believed they could bring about heaven on earth, and managed to live out futures that the rest of us haven’t yet reached.”—Caleb Crain, author of Necessary Errors “Despite marked differences separating these utopian movements, Jennings prizes in all of them their distinctive—and utterly American—optimism in facing a future in which their adherents believed they would usher in a glorious new social order. . . . Readers who resent the constraints of a barren realism will value this deep-probing inquiry into the quest for new social possibilities.”—Booklist (starred review) “Jennings proves an able guide to these groups. [His] comprehensive research makes for absorbing reading as he shows how different people attempted to find perfection and how they failed or succeeded.”—Kirkus Reviews
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About the Author
Chris Jennings grew up in New York City. He graduated from Deep Springs College and Wesleyan University. He lives in Northern California with his dog.
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Product details
Paperback: 512 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (August 22, 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0812983890
ISBN-13: 978-0812983890
Product Dimensions:
5.2 x 1.1 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.6 out of 5 stars
52 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#996,818 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Although it's popular history, this is a serious book -- not superficial or disrespectful of its human subjects. There are some light-hearted passages but the narrative never becomes silly.I had heard of and knew a little about most but not all of these groups but there was plenty of interesting information I had not come across before -- such as how some of the groups were (so to speak) kin to one another. Today, of course, "socialism" is a boogeybear in the USA -- don't look at me, Europeans, I've no idea why that should be. So it is especially interesting to learn more about how some prominent Americans in the past saw it as a key element in the construction of utopia and the future of not only the USA but humanity.I knew some utopian-minded people in the 1960s whose experiments also fizzled out.American may have been a tabula rasa, of sorts, but alas human beings are not. Not then, not now.
“It was a time when the imminence of paradise seemed reasonable to reasonable people.†(Kindle Location 140)I tend to clump stories about “oddball†cultures, cults, communes, and collectives, under the heading of ‘extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds’...and am mostly fascinated by them. The outlandish stories of which we managed convince ourselves and each other never cease to amaze.Chris Jennings’s non-fiction, Paradise Now: The Story of America Utopianism, highlights five of the most popular and influential utopian movements of 19th-century America, and rises to the level of amazing. Chuck-full of insights, illumination, and enlightenment, about those exercises in wishful thinking; it both informs and entertains.Recommendation: Worth the price and the effort (it’s a bit exhaustive in places) just to learn of the concept of Bible Communism… As opposed to that godless Soviet kind, I presume. I was also surprised to learn that “Go west, young man,†Horace Greeley, himself, was so seriously involved with communalism movements. Eye opening.“Nobody risks inventing a new world if they like the one in which they live.†(Kindle Location 6965).“In a century and a half, the prevailing outlook has shifted from jubilantly millenarian to tepidly apocalyptic. None of these predictions are necessarily wrong, but compared with the unmeasured, action-inspiring optimism of the nineteenth-century utopians, it appears that we are experiencing a deficit of imagination.†(Kindle Locations 6999-7001)Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition 9,757 Kindle Locations, 512 pages.
If you really want to understand why socialism has such a difficult time being successful, read Paradise Now by Chris Jennings. I've long been a student of the Second Great Awakening (among other early 19th Century religious studies), and knew somewhat of the Utopian experiments of that era, but this book fully enlightened me! Excellent history of the movements during this time frame. My first interest was Charles Fourier, about who Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an essay - I was taking a class in Emerson at the time when I came across his essay on "Fourier and the Socialist" -- of which Emerson highly disapproved, primarily because he believed in being totally "self-reliant" (also an long essay on that). The sections on the various groups such as the Shakers, Fourier and one of the more successful experiments - the Oneida Community -- are long enough to be books in their own right. Meticulously researched, excellent story telling, great read! Gives one a real feel for the various socialist experiments in the 1800s when Karl Marx was also making some inroads in that philosophy.
This took me several months to read because as I finished up each chapter....there was so much rich material and analysis left there....that I devoted some time with other references and books to answer questions I had. It is a remarkable book and full of interesting stories and lots of information. If you ever had a curiosity about utopias and how they fail....Chris Jennings takes you to several of these and lays out the basic facts. He also explains in great detail how each one came to fail (miserably) in the end. He is careful not to ridicule one particular religion or group....but he shows their weakness in planning. I would strongly recommend the book to amateur historians and college level students. If you are about to discuss utopias or address their fundamental nature....then you need to start with this book as your reference.
Besides the Shakers, I had never heard of any of these utopian societies before and found this book to give great depth to their ideas, how they got started, and what lead to their downfall. The narrative of each society is impartially written, which can seem like a feat given the implausibility of some of the ideas. I learned a great deal reading this book and was engaged throughout. It only took me about three days to read the entire thing because I was so engrossed.
This is a fascinating, in-depth look at the stories behind several utopian communities and the people who were inspired to start them. I don't read a lot of history, but I found this very hard to put down-almost a page turner! Some of the characters responsible for bringing the utopian dream to life are stranger than fiction, the events of their lives truly incredible. And, in case anyone is wondering, there are still communities like these in the U.S!
The author presents lots of information (much of it interesting) in a readable way.It would deserve more stars if it were less repetitious, more "sparkling" in its story-telling, and more vivid in sketching the societal context in which these groups arose.Despite my interest in this topic, I have stalled after the second or third chapter.
This a fascinating story of American utopias that I was only partially aware. It explains that communism arrived in America well before the Soviet Union tried to do it. And you will learn facts about of these communes that will probably surprise you. Including interesting ways of practicing birth control! A great read.
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