19th Cent. American Utopian and Intentional Societies, Cults

I'm interested in utopian and other intentional societies, as well as cults, particularly those from before about 1950. What are some good books about these? I'm looking for books on both the broad subject and individual communities, preferable nonfiction, but really good or interesting historical fiction is acceptable as well.

Google "School of Living". It was founded by Ralph Borsodi, an economist who lost his job in New York City after WWI ... he began questioning modern distribution practices, popular economic theory, etc ... wrote several books on his findings, one called Flight From The City, others: This Distribution Age, Education and Living, Education of the Whole Man ... founded his "School of Living" at his home near Suffern, New York. Attempted to spread his ideas during the depression, but government interference doomed his proposals ... Mildred Jenson Loomis carried on his work at her home near Brookville, Ohio, publishing newsletters, etc ... book: Go Ahead and Live ...the movement found new converts during the 60's ... A "School" of sorts based on his ideas still exists. Borsodi died an elderly man at his home in Keene, New Hampshire.

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright was interested in the same ideas ... I'm told he attended a Borsodi lecture in Milwaukee, but I don't know if the two ever met or corresponded. Wright's Usonian houses were a more sophisticated version of Borsodi's ideas of house design.

However, Baker Brownell's book: Architecture and Modern Life, c. 1938, written in collaboration with Wright, contains several pages outlining Borsodi's work.

Another, more recent book: Frank Lloyd Wright Versus America. The 1930's, by Donald Leslie Johnson, c. 1990 contains more detailed information about the period.

Of course Wright's Taliesin Fellowship remains a going concern. Founded in 1932, the Taliesin Fellowship carries on at Wright's homes ... Taliesin, Wisconsin, and Taliesin West, Arizona. Literally hundreds, if not thousands, of books have been and are being published on and about Frank Lloyd Wright.

This is a life long reading project.

I personally enjoyed reading Shirley Nelson's Fair Clear and Terrible aboout her parent's experiences in a Christian offshoot community in Maine.

Unfortunately I don't have the title, but I read a biography of Louisa May Alcott which detailed life at Fruitlands, the commune her father, Bronson Alcott, started.

Blithedale Romance is Nathaniel Hawthorne's fictional view of his time at Brook Farm (the transcendentalist community)

There are literally hundreds of books on the Shakers (who still exist), Oneida Community, the Bruderhof (who started in the 1920's and still exist), the Hutterites (still going strong), and the Owenite socialist experiments in the U.S. There are also two excellent scholarly journals Communal Studies and Nova Religio that cover these subjects.

If you want to narrow the topic down a little, I might be able to help some more.

The Communistic Societies of the United States is a book I found last year that covers most of these societies. I have not had a chance to read it yet so I can't give an opinion on it.

Death of a Winter Shaker is the first of a series of mysteries st in a Shaker community. My wife and the author went to school together so I can not give an impartial opinion.

Thanks for the suggestions, aulsmith. Unfortunately, I can't really think of a good way to narrow the topic down any right now.
I've read both The Blithedale Romance and The Communistic Societies of the United States. :) Nordhoff's book is great on the eight communities that he covers, especially since he visited each one himself.

5: Being a former reference librarian, let me see if I can help. Are you looking for a broad overview of these kinds of communities and how they fit into American lifre? Are you looking for details of communities that weren't covered in the Nordhoff and other books you've already read? You mention the term cult. Do you mean that in the conservative Christian sense of communities that are heterodox to Christian beliefs (Walter Ralston Martin's The Kingdom of the Cults is good for that)? Or are you using the word in a more general sense (religious studies people tend to use New Religious Movement or NRM) and want books from a more neutral stance?

Broad overviews are good, but I think I would prefer books on specific groups, particularly more obscure ones - I'm not really looking for much on the Amish or the Shakers, unless the books are REALLY good.
By cults, I'm looking for ones similar to the one mentioned in Brides of Eden - offshoot Christian or other religious communities with dark quirks (because without the dark quirks, they're intentional communities).
Does that help clarify any?

To SuzieBookworm

Here are a few books you might enjoy.

Mackay, Charles, LL. D.. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. 1852.Reprinted 1952. The Noonday Press.

MacKenzie. Norman. Secret Societies. 1967. Collier Books
.
Painter, Nell Irvin. 1979. The Narrative of Hosea Hudson: His Life as a Negro Communist in the South. Camridge. Harvard University Press.

I've heard of Popular Delusions before - it looks great!
The Narrative of Hosea Hudson looks interesting, too, a bit like Black Boy. I read that a few years ago and it was an eye-opener. I hadn't realized that Communism/Socialism was as common as it once was.

You'll find lots of dark stories in the Communal Studies journal. Also, their conferences are great because they invite actual communitarians to speak, so the academics can't ignore reality. Here's a link to their website http://www.communalstudies.info/

You might also be interested in investigating the Bruderhof. They started in Germany in the 1920s based on the ideas of the early anabaptists, not realizing there were communitarian anabaptists in North America. They fled to North and South America to escape Hitler. The second generation got more "culty" in your sense here in the US. I'd recommend Julius H. Rubin's Other Side of Joy (which deals with some of the darker side, but is after 1950. Also Elizabeth Bohlken-Zumpe's Torches Extinguished.

My reading in the 19th century has been more general than your current interests.

Look for stuff on the Oneida Community. Interesting group in the 1800s.

Also the Amana Community in Iowa (Kansas?) A large movement in the nineteenth century was Fourierism, which founded a number of communities throughout the country. There's a good treatment in Philip Gura's American Transcendentalism.

Then of course, it being Thanksgiving time, we can't forget the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. See William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation.

There's also Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker Movement, which is still widespread in small local groups and communities. See Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness, a classic memoir. Thomas Merton, in The Seven Storey Mountain, tells at length about his involvement with the New York City community of Catharine de Hueck, also the subject of two or three sentimental but entertaining memoirs by her husband, Eddie Doherty. Gall and Honey might be the best of them. Day and de Hueck were Catholic laypeople working and forming communities outside the official Catholic church structures (and sometimes coming in conflict with the clergy, especially the radical pacifist Day).