Skip to main content

  • HOME
  • CURRENT CONTENT
  • ALL CONTENT
  • SUBMIT
  • ABOUT
    • Journal
    • Editorial
  • INFO FOR
    • Librarians
    • Authors
    • Reprints and Permissions
    • Advertisers
    • Subscriptions and Single Issues
  • MORE
    • Alerts
    • Contact Us

  • Login

  • Advanced search

  • Login
Advanced Search
  • HOME
  • CURRENT CONTENT
  • ALL CONTENT
  • SUBMIT
  • ABOUT
    • Journal
    • Editorial
  • INFO FOR
    • Librarians
    • Authors
    • Reprints and Permissions
    • Advertisers
    • Subscriptions and Single Issues
  • MORE
    • Alerts
    • Contact Us
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

  • Books
Review: City of Refuge: Separatists and Utopian Town Planning, by Michael J. Lewis
Janet R. White
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
Vol. 78 No. 4, December 2019
(pp. 484-485) DOI: 10.1525/jsah.2019.78.4.484
Janet R. White
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Search for this author on this site
  • View author's works on this site
  • Article
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF
PreviousNext
Loading
Michael J. Lewis City of Refuge: Separatists and Utopian Town Planning Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016, 254 pp., 75 color and 75 b/w illus. $45 (cloth), ISBN 9780691171814

The separatists of Michael J. Lewis's subtitle are those utopianists who saw “no hope for reforming a wicked world” and so chose to withdraw from it (10). Unlike adherents of the main strand of utopian thought, which “aspires to perfect the world,” Lewis's protagonists accepted that the world “cannot be made perfect” and established sanctuaries from it (10), the “cities of refuge” of his title. There is, Lewis writes, a “distinct and unbroken intellectual tradition” of such separatist sanctuaries; the “living continuity of that tradition” is his principal theme (11).

The book is rather narrowly focused on a “German intellectual-theological tradition” that produced settlements with a “formal geometric unity” (16). The Ephrata Cloister and the Shakers, for example, are excluded because their settlements lack this geometric unity. Also excluded are utopian communities such as the Oneida Perfectionists and the North American Phalanx, which Lewis apparently considers to be in the mainstream of utopian rather than separatist thought. Within the narrow tradition he defines, Lewis finds rich ground. The book is …

View Full Text

SAH Member Access

Instead of logging in here, SAH Members obtain access by first logging in to the SAH website, then visiting the JSAH Online page and clicking the link to return to this site with access.

Log in using your username and password

Forgot your user name or password?

Log in through your institution

You may be able to gain access using your login credentials for your institution. Contact your library if you do not have a username and password.

Purchase access

PreviousNext
Back to top

Vol. 78 No. 4, December 2019

Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians: 78 (4)
  • Table of Contents
  • Table of Contents (PDF)
  • Cover (PDF)
  • Back Matter (PDF)
  • Front Matter (PDF)
eTOC Alert

RSSRSS Icon

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Review: City of Refuge: Separatists and Utopian Town Planning, by Michael J. Lewis
(Your Name) has sent you a message from Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians web site.
Print
Alerts
Sign In to Email Alerts with your Email Address
Citation Tools
Review: City of Refuge: Separatists and Utopian Town Planning, by Michael J. Lewis
Janet R. White
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
Vol. 78 No. 4, December 2019
(pp. 484-485) DOI: 10.1525/jsah.2019.78.4.484
Janet R. White
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Search for this author on this site
  • View author's works on this site

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Request Permissions
Share
Review: City of Refuge: Separatists and Utopian Town Planning, by Michael J. Lewis
Janet R. White
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
Vol. 78 No. 4, December 2019
(pp. 484-485) DOI: 10.1525/jsah.2019.78.4.484
Janet R. White
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Search for this author on this site
  • View author's works on this site
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Technorati logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
View Full Page PDF
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One
  • Top
  • Article
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF

Related Articles

Cited By...

More in this TOC Section

  • Review: Flintstone Modernism, or The Crisis in Postwar American Culture, by Jeffrey Lieber
  • Review: River Cities, City Rivers, edited by Thaïsa Way
  • Review: On Accident: Episodes in Architecture and Landscape, by Edward Eigen
Show more Books

Similar Articles

FIND US Facebook Account LinkRSS Feeds LinkTwitter Account LinkInstagram Account LinkLinkedin Account LinkYoutube Account LinkEmail Link

Customer Service

  • Reprints and Permissions
  • Contact

UC Press

  • About UC Press

Navigate

  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • Editorial
  • Contact

Content

  • Current Issue
  • All Content

Info For

  • Librarians
  • Authors
  • Advertisers
  • Subscriptions and Single Issues

Copyright © 2019 by the Society of Architectural Historians   Privacy   Accessibility