Customer Reviews

Visions Utopia: Nashoba, Rugby, Ruskin, New Communities (Tennessee Three Star Books)

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John Egerton wrote this brief (95 pages) book in 1977, discussing three "utopian" colonies that previously existed in Tennessee: Nashoba, Rugby, and Ruskin. He notes in the opening chapter, "Every state has its 'far-away places with strange-sounding names,' and Tennessee is no exception."

He observes that Nashoba "was one of the first and one of the few experimental attempts to find an alternative to slavery, and... it may have been the most practical and the most promising."

In his concluding chapter, "Reflections on Utopianism," Egerton finds the following similarities in the three colonies surveyed:

Each was initiated by a strong individual with an idealistic vision.
Each was established in Tennessee "almost by accident."
Each was developed as a cooperative community.
Their founders had no knowledge of the experimental colonies which preceded them in Tennessee.
Each suffered a lack of strong leadership in the absence of the founder.
They were "weakened by a confusion of purposes, and objectives."
They were made up of people "who seem in retrospect to have been poorly suited for the monumental tasks they undertook."

This book is essential reading for anyone interested in these three communities, or for those interested in intentional communities, utopian societies, communes, and similar experiments in living."