Page 18 RAIN January 1981 COMMUNITIES Dictionary of American Communal and Utopian History, by Robert S. Fogarty, 1980, 271 pp., $29.95 hardcover from: Greenwood Press 88 Post Road West Westport, CT 06881 For more than two centuries, the utopian impulse has been a vital force in American life. This volume chronicles hundreds of intentional communities which have arisen in response to a wide variety of social and spiri- .tual ideals of perfection. It also provides brief biographies of a number of utopian theorists and communal leaders, ranging from Robert Owen and Bronson Alcott to Upton Sinclair •and Father Divine. Emphasis is placed on nineteenth and early twentieth century communal experience and there are only scattered references to such contemporary communities as Twin Oaks in Virginia and the Ananda Cooperative Village in•California. The author claims that information on modem colonies is scant, but one can't help but wonder how it was possible to overlook • something as large and well-publicized as The Farm in Summertown, Tertnessee. There is a wealth of good information here on the earlier movements. The problem is in digging it out. The book is divided into several sections and appendices with some materials arranged alphabetically, others chrono- \ logically. Information in one section often duplicates information in another. A single encyclopedia-style alphabetical arrangement with extensive cross-referencing would have made.for a much more useful reference tool. •So would a much~reduced price. What makes a 271-page book without illustrations worth anything close tp $29. 95? -JF Amish Society, third edition, by John A. Hostetler, 1980, $6.95 from: John Hopkins University Press Baltimore, MD 21218 A half-century ago, the Amish were looked upon as a stubborn people who seemed to take the biblical admonition that Christians should be "a peculiar people" a bit too Jiterally. Typical of them was their rejection of tractors for their farms with the observation that tractors "don't make manure." This was. trrefutable but puzzling logic in a nation obsessed with the promise of machine progress. Today, the Amish are the objects of a •thriving tourist industry and are generally viewed as a hardworking, thrifty people who have preserved some important values no lo.nger evident in the larger society. Author Amish spokesn1en in \Vashingtor1~ D.C., seekiilg exemptit>:ll from federal welfare prog1·ams and bet~efits John Hostetler, who was raised in an Amish community, shares much o~ this admiration. He breaks down the "Pennsylvania Dutch" stereotypes fostered by the tourist industry and the-popular press to show us a society . which is sometimes oppressively conformist but is nbnetheless based on a strong sense of neighborliness and a healthy respect for the natural world. The Amish will not accept government aid, bear a·rms, or tolerate concentrations of power in their midst. A welldeveloped sense of appropriate scale is evident in their agriculture and industry. They are indeed a stubborn people, and much of what they have stubbornly adher~d to fo~ so long deserves our attention and our emulation. -JF Hutterite Society, by John A. Hostetler, 1974, $5.95 from: Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore, MD 21218 In many ways the Huttetites, who live primarily in the northern Great Plains.areas of Canada and the United States, are similar to the Amish, and they ·spring from the same German Anabaptist roots. Unlike the Amish, t4ey live and work communally and have had one of the longest and most successful experiences with communal life in North America. Because of his Amish background, author John Hostetler was rnadily accepted by the Hutterites and his study of them exhibits the same thoroughness and sensitivity which are evident in Amish Society. For anyone inte,rested in the problems and rewards of communal living, Hutterite Society is a book well worth reading. - JF
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