A common story is told about idealistic city dwellers who move to rural areas like the Catskills. Over the centuries, rural New York state has played host to utopian groups seeking out new, radically communal ways of life. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, groups like the Shakers and the Fourierists founded communities in Western New York. Later, in the Catskills, Buddhist monasteries were built and artists’ colonies like Byrdcliffe cropped up. In America, the quest for radical community—whether driven by religion, politics, or a desire to make art—has often been depicted as requiring a literal journey: a move from the city to the country, where it’s possible to build something new and start over.

This is broadly the story Adrian Shirk tells in her new book, Heaven is a Place on Earth: Searching for an American Utopia. A talented researcher and a sympathetic chronicler of intentional communities, Shirk visits a Bruderhof community in the foothills of the […]