“Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism”
Random House, $28
Author Chris Jennings examines the evolution of an idea — that the world can be a better place in the here and now — through the rise and fall of five of the most influential utopian movements in 19th century America, or what he calls “the busy golden age of American utopianism.”
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Jennings tells the story of these interrelated utopian movements and their often charismatic leaders. The Shakers — known for their honesty, frugality and simple living as well as their folk art, furniture and hymns — established a celibate society where both sexes were equal. The Welsh socialist and textile magnate Robert Owen created New Harmony in southern Indiana as an egalitarian and rationalist utopia, which he called the New Moral World, where people would live in peace, harmony and equality.
New Yorker Albert Brisbane, following the doctrines of the French social theorist and visionary Charles Fourier, believed in small, cooperative villages, or “phalanxes,” that fanned out across the United States. Its most famous community was Brook Farm in Massachusetts (Nathaniel Hawthorne was a founding member, and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were supporters). The Frenchman Etienne Cabet, author of popular utopian romance novel “Travels in Icaria,” preached a mystical strain of socialism and established Icarian communities, first in Texas and later in Illinois, Missouri, Iowa and California. Finally, the Oneida Community (today best known for its cutlery and tableware) in central New York pioneered gender equality and a controversial form of birth control under the “brilliant and mostly benign autocracy” of the Ivy League-educated Yankee John Humphrey Noyes.
Even though all of these experiments failed or faltered, Jennings argues that we can still learn much from them. He suggests, in fact, that they were ahead of their time. Jennings concludes with a brief commentary on the subsequent “flood tide” of utopianism, some 100 years later: the counterculture movement of the late 1960s and early ’70s, as long-haired utopians of the 20th century, from Humboldt County in northern California to Taos, N.M., rejected the values of their own day to establish a more personal version of a better world.
Thoughtful, measured and surprisingly relevant.
“Toilets: A Spotter’s Guide”
Lonely Planet, $11.99
The humble toilet goes by many names around the world: restroom, lavatory, loo, bog, latrine, dunny and water closet, among others. It also comes in many shapes and sizes. The editors of this fabulously entertaining “spotter’s guide” insist that toilets can often transcend their “primary function of being a convenience” to become actual works of art and to make a “cultural statement” about the society that they serve.
In these pages, you will find all kinds of toilets: tundra toilets in Arctic Canada; jungle toilets in Laos; forest outhouses in Finland; desert toilets in India, Uzbekistan and Bolivia; pop-up urinals in London; eco-toilets in British Columbia and Australia; high-tech toilets in Tokyo; hip toilets in New York; and art deco restrooms in Miami Beach. The futuristic toilet pods in the London restaurant Sketch look like something straight out of the film “Alien.”
The public toilets in New Zealand are among the most inventive, such as the “lobster loos” on the Wellington waterfront or the shiplike cubicles in Matakana that honor the local boat-building industry. The most charming toilet is the thatched toilet in County Cork, Ireland. The toilet at the Shard, the tallest building in London, offers fantastic bird’s-eye views of the city skyline. Another toilet has its own island known appropriately enough as toilet island off the coast of Placencia, Belize, while Suwon in South Korea boasts a theme park devoted to toilets. Perhaps the most visually striking toilets are Tel Aviv’s “fruity bathroom” in the shape and color of Jaffa oranges and the Gaudi-style toilet blocks in Bahia, Brazil. There’s even an out-of-this-world toilet: a prototype space toilet that uses a suction system to help defy gravity.
Pure fun.
June Sawyers is a freelance writer.
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