Robert Owen

Visiting the sites of two 19th-century utopian experiments in the American Midwest.

The wealthy textile manufacturer harbored ambitions that went far beyond the well-being of his own workforce and depleted his fortune.

America’s utopian communities have traditionally promoted egalitarianism and alternatives to capitalism. Company towns do the opposite.

A look at socialism’s far-reaching influence on American thought.

The American Midwest was once a site of radical experimentation for various communitarian groups. What has become of their legacy?

Expanding the radical promise of the American Revolution.

New Harmony has attracted eccentric spiritual groups, social reformers, intellectuals, and artists.

On the nineteenth-century artists and thinkers who pictured a future of abundance powered by steam.

How did the genre of self-help go from one focused on collective empowerment to one serving the class hierarchy as it stands?

The hidden history of Utopian Socialism and its close relationship with cultures of esoteric spirituality in the nineteenth-century United States. 

Over 100 years, a tactic first designed to keep workers happy morphed into a marketing strategy.