Radical in its dayand long overdue in Englishthis rare French classic traces the journey of fictional British Lord Clarisdall to the exotic island nation of Icaria. To his delight, Clarisdell discovers an ideal utopian democracy prospering amid peace and harmony. Devoid of competition or property, Icaria triumphs over the social evils of nineteeth-century capitalism. Clarisdell's amazement is constant. Foreign affairs are conducted by the community. Money and domestic commerce do not exist. Everyone gives to and draws from the common pot in equal measure. No pastoral idyll, the narrative describes a modern machine-age economy with social policiesfree education, equality for the sexes, strict family/moral tiesthat reflect enlightenment. Crime here is a myth; arts and culture are treasured commodities. Cabet described a totally integrated "community of goods" in the fifty years following the great revolution of 1782. Published at personal risk, his bold allegory gave birth to a real Icarian community that lasted into the late 1800s.

This is the only English-language book-length study of ancient Icaria and its people. It traces the history of the island in five different periods and is beautifully illustrated with photographs of key sites and monuments. Also included are an appendix listing the island's main inscriptions and a select bibliography.

The United States is the only modern nation in which communes have continuously existed for the past two hundred years. This definitive history of communes in America examines the major factors that have supported the existence and growth of communes throughout American history. The most impressive survey of the communal experience since the works of Noyes and Nordhoff, it is informed by a deep respect for the human subjects and organizational forms of American communes. The findings in the analytical chapters are of considerably theoretical import beyond the historical narrative. Oved details the founding, growth, development, and sometimes failure of alternative societies from 1735 to 1939: Icaria, Ephrata, Oneida, Shaker, religious, secular, and socialist communes. Extensive reference material cited will assure this work a special place in the archives of the literature on communes.

Details what it was like growing up in the longest lasting utopian community in Iowa not connected to a religious group. The Icarians were a French-based utopian socialist movement, established by the followers of politician, journalist, and author Étienne Cabet. In an attempt to put his economic and social theories into practice, Cabet led his followers to the United States of America in 1848, where the Icarians established a series of egalitarian communes in the states of Texas, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and California. The movement split several times due to factional disagreements. The last community of Icarians, located a few miles outside Corning, Iowa, disbanded voluntarily in 1898. The 46 years of tenure at this location made the Corning Icarian Colony one of the longest-lived non-religious communal living experiments in U.S. history.