Without Sin: The Life and Death of the Oneida Community

by Spencer Klaw

Overview

Without Sin chronicles the rise and fall of nineteenth-century America's most succesful experiment in Utopian living: New York's Oneida Community (1848-1880). Founded by the charismatic Christian Perfectioniost John Humphrey Noyes, this remarkable society flourished for more than thirty years as a unique world where property was shared, men and women were equals, sex was free and open, work was to be joyous, and pleasure was felt to be "the very business that God set Adam and Eve about."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140239300
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/01/1994
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Spencer Klaw has written for Esquire, Harper's, American Heritage, and The New York Times Magazine, among other magazines and journals. He is the author of The New Brahmins: Scientific Life in America and The Great American Medicine Show. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, Barbara.

Table of Contents

Without SinAcknowledgements
List of Illustrations

Without Sin

Notes on Sources
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"First-class American history—sustained, beautifully informed, ironic in just the right places"
—Alfred Kazin

"An exceptionally fine work of popular history . . . Klaw tells the story of this remarkable social experiment in readable, engaging prose"
—The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Fascinating . . . a sympathetic, detailed, and wonderfully well-told account."
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"A vivid portrait of a truly American moment and community"
—The Wall Street Journal

"We beign to suspect that the real life and identity of America lies in its unique—and at time maddeningly independent—search for God and personal salvation and not in its wars and generals and presidents. Spencer Klaw's brilliant and poetic book illuminates magnificently one uch experiement. . . . An exhilirating and disturbing portrait on the fault-line of the American conscience."
—Ken Burns

Editorial Reviews

"First-class American history—sustained, beautifully informed, ironic in just the right places"
—Alfred Kazin

"An exceptionally fine work of popular history . . . Klaw tells the story of this remarkable social experiment in readable, engaging prose"
—The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Fascinating . . . a sympathetic, detailed, and wonderfully well-told account."
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"A vivid portrait of a truly American moment and community"
—The Wall Street Journal

"We beign to suspect that the real life and identity of America lies in its unique—and at time maddeningly independent—search for God and personal salvation and not in its wars and generals and presidents. Spencer Klaw's brilliant and poetic book illuminates magnificently one uch experiement. . . . An exhilirating and disturbing portrait on the fault-line of the American conscience."
—Ken Burns

From the Publisher

From 1848 to 1880 a unique experiment in cooperative living took place in Oneida, N.Y. This was a utopian socialistic society founded by John Humphrey Noyes, a follower of Christian Perfectionism, a belief in moral perfection and in separation from the world of sinners. Drawing on documents left by some of the original 200-plus members, Klaw ( The Great American Medicine Show ) provides an informative account of the commune. In his striving for the perfection of life without sin, Noyes imposed ``complex marriage'' at Oneida, a system that provided men and women with multiple sex partners and prohibited monogamy because ``it impeded the free flow of Christian love.'' Conception of children was forbidden unless Noyes approved of the genetic attributes of the prospective parents. Members pooled their labor and had cooperative ownership of the animal trap and silverware business that supported them. After Noyes fled to Canada in 1879 in fear of prosecution for unorthodox sex practices, residents gradually adopted more traditional social arrangements. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

For more than 30 years (1848-1880), the Oneida community in upstate New York, a utopian communal experiment founded on love, sex, and Christ, flourished under the leadership of its founder John Humphrey Noyes. This account chronicles its rise and fall. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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