| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Creating a Perfect World: Religious and Secular Utopias in Nineteenth-Century Ohio. By Catherine M. Rokicky. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002. x, 181 pp. Cloth, $34.95, ISBN 0-8214-1438-0. Paper, $17.95, ISBN 0-8214-1439-9.)

This work, despite the author's consultation of important manuscript sources, presents a largely synthetic and summary overview of the history of three major religious utopian groups—the Shakers, the Mormons, and the Zoarite Separatists—and a small clutch of secular communities (mostly Fourierist) that were present in Ohio during the first half of the state's history (1805–1905). Part of the Ohio Bicentennial series, it bears the editorial stamp of a flat narrative style and an often pedestrian presentation of the basic factual material of regional history. In an age of boldly imaginative and creative essays in historiography, this volume seems dated in its approach to the subject and reads more like a series of articles for a historical encyclopedia than a monograph.

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