San Antonio College Library

"The Shakers were nineteenth-century America's largest and best known communal utopian society. By 1840, nearly 6,000 celibate Brothers and Sisters lived and worked in 18 communities from Maine to Kentucky. The Shakers were famous for their unusual way of life, for the excellence and simplicity of their work, and for the dance worship that gave them their name. For more than 200 years the Shakers pursued their unique way of life, based on principles...

"Set on the fictional island of Nollop, situated off the coast of South Carolina and home to the inventor of the pangram The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog. The islanders have erected a monument to honor their late hero, but one day a tile with the letter "Z" falls from the statue. The leaders interpret the fallen tile as a message from beyond the grave and the letter is banned from use. On an island where the residents pride themselves on...

"From the Shakers to the Branch Davidians, America's communal utopians have captured the popular imagination. Seventeen original essays here demonstrate the relevance of such groups to the mainstream of American social, religious, and economic life. The contributors examine the beliefs and practices of the most prominent utopian communities founded before 1965, including the long-overlooked Catholic monastic communities and Jewish agricultural colonies...

New Englander Sarah Worth goes west to join a Hindu commune in Arizona. There she mingles with the other sannyasins (pilgrims) in the difficult attempt to subdue ego and achieve salvation and release from illusion.

Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is its charismatic leader. Hidden in the hills, their...

On her first day at a new school, Lily befriends one of the daughters of infamous avant-garde painter Evan Trentham. He and his wife are trying to escape the stifling conservatism of 1930s Australia by inviting other like-minded artists to live and work at their family home. Lily becomes infatuated with this wild, makeshift family and longs to truly be part of it. As the years pass, Lily observes the way the lives of these artists come to reflect...

"What is life like in contemporary American communes? How do families fit into communal life? What are communal families, and what impact do families have on how communes are run and how they develop? As the only contemporary exploration of communal families, this book investigates the assumptions that scholars, and others, have made regarding the status of the family within communes, and debunks current myths about communes and communal families....

Blithedale romance: A group of Utopians, unhappy with dissolute, mid-nineteenth-century America, takes to the pastoral life; but the members find little satisfaction in farmwork and communal life because of competing ambitions and idealism. Instead of changing the world, they pursue self-centered paths that ultimately lead to tragedy. Absorbing 1852 novel about love, idealism, and politics bristles with Hawthorne's perceptive wit and intelligence. Fanshawe:...

The story of an extraordinary experiment in communal living, one involving young but already iconic writers--and the country's best-known burlesque performer--in a house in Brooklyn during 1940 and 1941. It was a fevered yearlong party fueled by the appetites of youth and by the shared sense of urgency to take action as artists in the months before America entered the war. In spite of the sheer intensity, the house was for its residents a creative...