Angel and the Serpent: The Story of New Harmony

by William E. Wilson and William E. Wilson

Book Overview

"The Angel and the Serpent is a book which combines scholarship and literary grace, and which recreates for us both the world of the Rappites and the Owenites." --Henry Steele Commager, The New York Times Book Review

Here is the story of George Rapp's German Harmonists and Robert Owen's Idealists--the two vastly different communities that shaped the history of New Harmony, Indiana Both the Rappites and the Owenites came to New Harmony to...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0253203260
• ISBN13: 9780253203267
• Release Date: April 1984
• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Length: 242 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.3"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A bit more serpent, please

I came to this book in an effort to find out more about the failure of the New Harmony community, which was cited in Original Sin: A Cultural History as an example of best intentions gone awry -- presumably because of the essential flaws that are inherent in human nature. The approximately half of the book on Robert Owen and New Harmony is engaging and surprisingly easy reading, despite being a bit heavy on such details as who traveled when on what boat to get there. Considering that clearly scholarly intent, it was lacking in potentially useful footnotes. What was more of concern to me was that it also lacked convincing detail on the reasons for New Harmony's failure. It cited disagreements on religious matters and divisions that resulted in the formation of splinter groups, and it offered assertions of collapse by the author and some opinions by sources present at the creation about the motley mixture of people attracted to New Harmony, but did not provide enough in the way of specifics. I kept waiting for a clear description and assessment of the community's failure, an anticipated climax to the tale, but it never arrived. Otherwise, a seemingly useful book on an under studied figure in utopian thought.