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Diggers & Dreamers Press, 2001 Pb., 312 pp. About US $25
Available from www.edgeoftime.co.uk.
Where else can we learn about 600 years of utopian and communal experiments in one book? Author Chris Coates, a longtime participant in the British utopian communal movement and trained in sociology, is an editor of Diggers and Dreamers, a directory of British communal groups. He writes with a light and engaging style, making what could have been a dry reference work into a readable, if not fascinating, book.
While Utopia Britannica obviously focuses on utopianism and communalism in Britain, it also provides background to many well-known communal groups which settled in North America and Australia: the Shakers, Moravians, New Harmonists, and Quakers. The Salvation Army and Nazism are shown as utopian philosophies, and surprisingly, many communes were inspired from them.
Many people...