The utopian socialism of Charles Fourier spread throughout Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, but it was in the United States that it generated the most intense excitement. In this rich and engaging narrative, Carl J. Guarneri traces the American Fourierist movement from its roots in the religious, social, and economic upheavals of the 1830s, through its bold communal experiments of the 1840s, to its lingering twilight after the Civil War.
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The Utopian Alternative is soundly researched, deftly crafted, and engagingly written. And it is sufficiently broad and balanced to make it a book that no scholar interested in the uncertain leap of the United States into modern capitalist culture can afford to overlook.
" - Journal of American History
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Carl Guarneri has vastly advanced our understanding of American 'Utopianism' with this magisterial study of its most important secular manifestation, the Fourierite movement.
" - Reviews in American History
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This work should stand as a scholarly landmark for another half-century.
" - American Historical Review
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With this book, Carl Guarneri takes his place as one of the leading American historians of his generation.
" - The Annals of Iowa
