Presents ideas and values underlying utopian communities and communal living, as well as extensive research on the forms of organization in successful and lasting communes of the nineteenth century. Draws links to the 1970's contemporary commune movement, while exploring the moral and social issues of the commune movement. Kanter writes that she hopes the work will "[...] demonstrate to those who feel that communes are impractical, impossible, or unrealizable that in the past a number of utopian communities have in fact been successes."