"It was heaven on earth--and, some whispered, the devil's garden. Thousands came by trains and carriages to see this new Eden, carved from hundreds of acres of wild woodland. They marveled at orchards bursting with fruit, thick herds of Ayrshire cattle and Cotswold sheep, and whizzing mills. They gaped at the people who lived in this place -- especially the women, with their queer cropped hair and shamelessly short skirts. The men and women of this strange outpost worked and slept together -- without sin, they claimed. From 1848 to 1881, a small utopian colony in upstate New York -- the Oneida Community -- was known for its shocking sexual practices, from open marriage and free love to the sexual training of young boys by older women. And in 1881, a one-time member of the Oneida Community -- Charles Julius Guiteau -- assassinated President James Garfield in a brutal crime that shook America to its core. An Assassin in Utopia is the first book that weaves together these explosive stories in a tale of utopian experiments, political machinations, and murder. Against a vivid backdrop of ambition, hucksterism, epidemics, and spectacle, the book's interwoven stories fuse together in the climactic murder of President Garfield in 1881 -- at the same time as the Oneida Community collapsed."-- Front jacket flap.

A utopia of lust. The secret history ; A revolution of the senses -- The editor and the assassin. H. Greeley & Co. ; Muggletonians and mystics ; Garfield's crucible ; Dreams and disasters ; Horace Greeley for President -- Kingdom come. The master of love ; Prizes of power ; Serpents in the garden ; The removal ; End times ; Over the falls.