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An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President's Murder
This true crime odyssey explores a forgotten, astonishing chapter of American history, leading the reader from a free-love community in upstate New York to the shocking assassination of President James Garfield.
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. This deeply researched narrative—by bestselling author Susan Wels—tells the true, interlocking stories of the Oneida Community and its radical founder, John Humphrey Noyes; his idol, the eccentric newspaper publisher Horace Greeley (founder of the New Yorker and the New York Tribune) ; and the gloomy, indecisive President James Garfield—who was assassinated after his first six months in office.
Juxtaposed to their stories is the odd tale of Garfield’s assassin, the demented Charles Julius Guiteau, who was connected to all of them in extraordinary, surprising ways.
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.
Colorful and compelling, An Assassin in Utopia is a page-turning odyssey through America’s nineteenth-century cultural and political landscape.
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. This deeply researched narrative—by bestselling author Susan Wels—tells the true, interlocking stories of the Oneida Community and its radical founder, John Humphrey Noyes; his idol, the eccentric newspaper publisher Horace Greeley (founder of the New Yorker and the New York Tribune) ; and the gloomy, indecisive President James Garfield—who was assassinated after his first six months in office.
Juxtaposed to their stories is the odd tale of Garfield’s assassin, the demented Charles Julius Guiteau, who was connected to all of them in extraordinary, surprising ways.
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.
Colorful and compelling, An Assassin in Utopia is a page-turning odyssey through America’s nineteenth-century cultural and political landscape.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published February 7, 2023
117 people are currently reading
2,542 people want to read
About the author
Susan Wels
15Ìýbooks14ÌýfollowersSusan Wels is a New York Times-bestselling author, historian, and journalist. Her new book, An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President's Murder—a New York Times Editors Choice—is the first book to link the assassination of President James Garfield in 1881 to a free-love community in upstate New York. Filled with "rollicking pleasures," according to The New York Times Book Review, "Wels's kaleidoscopic romp is an undeniable thrill." Wels's work has also been praised and published by the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, PEOPLE, Smithsonian's Air & Space Magazine, the New York Post, Time.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, the San Jose Mercury-News, and The Independent (UK). A graduate of Stanford University in English literature and journalism, she has a master's degree in history from San Francisco State University. She has worked on assignment around the world and served as correspondent on the Titanic Research and Recovery Expedition, reporting daily from the site of the Titanic in the North Atlantic.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 255 reviews
February 3, 2024
The publishers should be thrown in prison for false advertising because
1. This isn't a story, it's a collection of historical accounts about vaugely related events.
2. If you're going to put sex cult in the title, give me more than like 5% of the book talking about said cult.
3. Who thought this structure would work? There's no theme, there's no through line, there's no rhyme, and too much tenuous reason.
It's like saying I'm going to talk about Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neil but bringing up 9/11, Pogs, and Nirvana as if they contributed to the three peat.
Come on now. Do better.
1. This isn't a story, it's a collection of historical accounts about vaugely related events.
2. If you're going to put sex cult in the title, give me more than like 5% of the book talking about said cult.
3. Who thought this structure would work? There's no theme, there's no through line, there's no rhyme, and too much tenuous reason.
It's like saying I'm going to talk about Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neil but bringing up 9/11, Pogs, and Nirvana as if they contributed to the three peat.
Come on now. Do better.
February 21, 2023
A altogether fun read, especially if you like reading about Presidential Assassinations. However, the two topics (Charles J. Guiteau, the utopian Oneida Community) are not related enough to justify basing a book off both of them, since Guiteau didn't spend all that much time there, and was pretty much kicked out for being a creepy proto-Incel. It's like writing a book about The Ramones and 9/11 on the basis of the band maybe visiting the Twin Towers once or twice.
I enjoyed it overall, but I think it would have been better as two separate books.
I enjoyed it overall, but I think it would have been better as two separate books.
June 30, 2023
A more accurate title for this book might be SOME LOOSELY CONNECTED EVENTS IN 19TH CENTURY AMERICA THE AUTHOR FINDS INTERESTING. What's missing here is what is commonly called a thesis. Other than the writer's interest and some coincidental relationships, there really isn't much to connect the contents of this book to a central idea.
The story of the Oneida community is fascinating and told well enough here, but other books address it with better detail and documentation. That Charles Guiteau had been a denizen of Oneida is an interesting fact but its connection to President Garfield's assassination is pretty much in the head of the author. Likewise the long digressions about P.T. Barnum, Ulysses Grant, and other luminaries are amusing but baffling as to their place in the narrative.
I don't regret reading the book. It's told in a lively, informal manner and the scattered factoids are interesting, but the whole really isn't history and certainly adds nothing to the study of America's past.
The story of the Oneida community is fascinating and told well enough here, but other books address it with better detail and documentation. That Charles Guiteau had been a denizen of Oneida is an interesting fact but its connection to President Garfield's assassination is pretty much in the head of the author. Likewise the long digressions about P.T. Barnum, Ulysses Grant, and other luminaries are amusing but baffling as to their place in the narrative.
I don't regret reading the book. It's told in a lively, informal manner and the scattered factoids are interesting, but the whole really isn't history and certainly adds nothing to the study of America's past.
Want to read
September 14, 2022It probably says something about me as a person that I saw “assassination� and “sex cult� and instantly knew this would be about Charles Gitout—oops sorry, I meant Charles Guiteau.
March 29, 2023
DNF'ed at 40%, sorry. This did seem well-researched, but everything is presented in a confounding jumble without any further analysis or criticism. The transitions were flimsy at best; in an 8-hour workday I was only able to get through about 2 hours of the audiobook, constantly pausing and rewinding to try to figure out how the timeline of events had just hopped two weeks into the past, or six months into the future, and why. The constant name-dropping started to hit me like a jumpscare; I'm still not sure why P.T. Barnum kept showing up, and the level of detail we went into about the deaths of animals in the fire that burnt down his first museum felt really gross. And this was all written with a level of credulity I just couldn't wrap my mind around--I cannot imagine addressing the spiritualist movement of the 1800s and telling the story of the Fox sisters without acknowledging that it was all a self-confessed hoax? Maybe the author is expecting readers to know better, to already have some familiarity with the story; but if that's the case, why did we spend so much time going into such detail about their rise to fame? I'm just not sure, and after reading through a few other reviews, I lost faith that it would be worth trudging through the rest in search of resolution. It seems like the author really just wanted to share a lot of wacky, interesting stories from lesser-known events in the 19th century, which I think could've been fine with maybe another round of edits to smooth out the outline a little and give everything a more coherent structure.
March 14, 2023
Ever since hearing about the Oneida colony a few years ago, I've been wanting to read a book about it. Well, I got that and a lot more.
Wels does discuss Oneida in some depth, and this place, this experiment, was truly extraordinary in American history. Yes, there have been other counter-cultural communities over the years, but to buck the social mores so hard, and to last for decades? It truly is extraordinary!
But in addition to the story of Oneida, significant real estate is given to everyone and everything from P.T. Barnum to presidential politics. (These two subjects going together so well.) And in particular, the rise and fall--at the hands of assassin Charles Giteau--of President Garfield. Giteau had ties to Oneida, though apparently wasn't able to fit into the culture OR the counter-culture.
There's more. Newspaperman Horace Greeley and several other 19th century notables are covered, giving readers a good overview of the times. I am not even remotely a history buff, but this book really kept me riveted. So much of what it recounts was crazy! If they'd taught me any of this in school, maybe I WOULD be a history buff!
As an overview of the times and the major players therein, this was great. But I think next time, I may look for a book a bit narrower in focus. I believe there was a good one published a few years ago. Susan Wels has whet my appetite! I look forward to learning more.
Wels does discuss Oneida in some depth, and this place, this experiment, was truly extraordinary in American history. Yes, there have been other counter-cultural communities over the years, but to buck the social mores so hard, and to last for decades? It truly is extraordinary!
But in addition to the story of Oneida, significant real estate is given to everyone and everything from P.T. Barnum to presidential politics. (These two subjects going together so well.) And in particular, the rise and fall--at the hands of assassin Charles Giteau--of President Garfield. Giteau had ties to Oneida, though apparently wasn't able to fit into the culture OR the counter-culture.
There's more. Newspaperman Horace Greeley and several other 19th century notables are covered, giving readers a good overview of the times. I am not even remotely a history buff, but this book really kept me riveted. So much of what it recounts was crazy! If they'd taught me any of this in school, maybe I WOULD be a history buff!
As an overview of the times and the major players therein, this was great. But I think next time, I may look for a book a bit narrower in focus. I believe there was a good one published a few years ago. Susan Wels has whet my appetite! I look forward to learning more.
August 17, 2023
If you visit the gift shop across the street from Ford’s Theater in our nation’s capitol, you will see a stack of books about Lincoln extending from the floor to the second story ceiling. Yet every year brings new books about our 16th president, leaving me to wonder what there is to say about Lincoln that has not been written already.
Conversely, relatively few books have been written about James Garfield, and many of those which have been published are part of a series � e.g., on U.S. presidents. The dearth of books about Garfield always has mystified me because he is one of our nation’s most fascinating characters, serving during his lifetime as preacher, teacher, university president, lawyer, state legislator, Major General in the U.S. Army during the Civil War, nine-term U.S. Congressman, senator (a position he declined upon election to the presidency), and, of course, our 20th president. Even Garfield’s death was fascinating; he lingered for three month after being shot and probably died from malpractice, rather than from the wound itself.
So, when a new book about Garfield appears, I am quick to pounce on it. The most recent work about Garfield is Susan Wels� “Assassin in Utopia.� As the book’s title suggests, Garfield shares top billing with his assassin, the loathsome Charles Guiteau. You will learn that there is more to the story about how Guiteau became an assassin than most people know.
Many other interesting characters also appear. Horace Greeley, P.T. Barnum, U.S. Grant, and Rutherford B. Hayes have significant supporting roles. Even Mark Twain and Karl Marx make cameo appearances (as journalists employed by Greeley), as does Alexander Graham Bell (who invented a device that was used � unsuccessfully � to locate the bullet that lodged in Garfield’s chest). Wels presents mini-biographies of these characters, revealing intriguing details about their lives and careers. The web of relationships between and among these historical figures is mind boggling. But the broad expanse of the narrative comes at the expense of focus and depth.
The “utopia� in the book’s title refers to the Oneida Community established in upstate New York in 1848 by John Humphrey Noyes, a utopian socialist who also happened to be a cousin of Rutherford B. Hayes. The Oneida Community was one of many experimental group living arrangements that were founded during the mid to late 19th century. Horace Greeley financially supported another such community in Colorado, and P.T. Barnum owned property in that community. The founders of these groups saw their communities as models for alternative lifestyles.
At its peak, the Oneida Community had a membership of over 300, and it endured until 1881 � when it was converted into a cooperative industrial association. Members shared responsibility for household chores, and the Community supported itself through many successful industries. Members manufactured animal traps, silk thread, leather travel bags, and palm-leaf hats. They grew and canned fruits and vegetables. The most successful trade of all, however, was manufacturing silverware � an industry that continues to this day.
But the Oneida Community differed from other communes in a couple of important respects. First, the group believed in spiritualism � the belief that the living can communicate with the dead. Second, and more importantly, Noyes promoted group marriage � which he called “complex marriage.� (Aren’t they all?) Noyes had theological training at Dartmouth and became convinced that open marriage was God’s will. Men and women in the commune were free to engage in sexual intercourse with as many different partners as they chose, and they fully availed themselves of that opportunity. While this may sound egalitarian, Noyes and the other senior men in the community arrogated to themselves the responsibility for deflowering the young women in the group, and they engineered pairings between and among group members. Sexual initiation occurred as early as age 12; Noyes himself maintained a long term sexual relationship with his own niece, beginning at that age. Children born of the various liaisons were raised communally.
Although one would have thought that an arrangement of this sort would have generated outrage in the surrounding region, that was not the case. There were, to be sure, a few times when the Oneidans were investigated for violating statutes proscribing fornication and adultery. But by and large they were perceived as good neighbors. The Oneidans contributed to the economic well being of the region, and they frequently hosted social events to which their neighbors were invited.
So what does any of this have to do with Charles Guiteau? Guiteau was one of the early members of the Oneida Community. But he never fit in. The women of Oneida universally rejected his advances, and Guiteau believed that the communal work he was asked to do was beneath him. After a couple of years, Guiteau left. But he was no more successful outside Oneida than he was in the commune, and he begged for a second chance. Reluctantly, the community readmitted him. But he had no better luck wooing the women of Oneida the second time than he did initially. So, Guiteau again left the commune, never to return. Wels suggests that the alienation Guiteau experienced at Oneida was the first step on the road to him becoming Garfield’s assassin. But he support for this proposition seems a little thin.
In the years that followed, Guiteau tried his hand at a variety of jobs. He moved to Chicago and became a practicing lawyer. But he routinely ignored his cases and misappropriated his clients� funds, causing him to flee town just ahead of the law. Guiteau eventually found a wife and decided to start a career as a preacher. But his sermons were not well received and the job was not well paying. Guiteau and his wife moved from town to town � with the debt collectors in hot pursuit � and the marriage later dissolved. But none of these failures dispelled his delusions of grandeur. Guiteau remained convinced that he was destined for great accomplishments.
At some point, Guiteau decided to pursue a career in journalism and applied for a position on Greeley’s New York Tribune. Although Greeley did not offer him a job, that rejection did not stop Guiteau from supporting Greeley when he ran against U.S. Grant in the presidential election of 1872. Guiteau was convinced that his support would result in an appointment to a prominent post in a Greeley Administration. But Guiteau backed the wrong horse in that election and his dreams were shattered.
Although he had earlier supported Grant’s opponent, Guiteau decided to back Grant’s quest for a third term in 1880, delivering speeches on his own initiative without any encouragement from the campaign team. These speeches were essentially edited versions of the pro-Greeley (anti-Grant) speeches he had written 8 years earlier. But again, Guiteau backed the wrong candidate. While a reasonable man might have known when to quit, that did not stop Guiteau. When Garfield secured the Republican nomination, Guiteau again recycled his earlier speeches and joined the Garfield team. Guiteau was again convinced that his efforts would lead to a prominent position in the presidential administration and � more remarkably � that he would himself become president some day.
One of the shocking revelations about the book is how lax security was in the 19th century. There was no effort to screen the people who had access to high public officials. Shabbily-dressed, mentally unstable, uncredentialed Guiteau had virtually unfettered access to Garfield. Garfield’s vice president, Chester Arthur, estimated seeing Guiteau 20 times in Garfield’s New York hotel suite during the campaign.
Once Garfield was elected, Guiteau began in earnest to seek the prominent position that he felt he deserved. Garfield’s staff reported that Guiteau visited the White House every few days in an effort to secure an appointment as ambassador to France or Austria. Guiteau also regularly visited Garfield’s Secretary of State, James Blaine. Shockingly, Guiteau actually managed to obtain an audience with both Garfield and Blaine in their offices. Guiteau came armed with copies of his campaign speeches, which he claimed were pivotal in winning the election. Garfield dismissed Guiteau politely; Blaine less so. These rejections fed the flames that eventually led Guiteau to kill the president.
There was another, related factor. During the 1880 campaign, Garfield solicited the support of Roscoe Conkling, a senator from New York and Republican power-broker, who had backed Grant before the convention nominated Garfield. Conkling reluctantly agreed to support Garfield, but only on the understanding that he would be rewarded with appointments of his allies to key positions in the Garfield administration. Garfield had no such understanding. On the advice of Blaine � Conkling’s political arch-enemy � Garfield denied Conkling’s allies the appointments they expected. Conkling felt betrayed. More importantly, so did Guiteau � who had supported Grant and Conkling in their bid for the Republican nomination before switching his allegiance to Garfield.
Feeling personally jilted and believing that the country was on the wrong course, Guiteau decided that the only solution was to “remove� the president. That would make Chester Arthur � a Conkling crony � the president. Guiteau began stalking the president every time he left the White House. Before firing the fatal shot, Guiteau had multiple earlier opportunities to assassinate the president. Garfield was advised to tighten his security, but dismissed those recommendations with the observation that political assassinations were like lightning � there was nothing you could do about them and there was no sense worrying about them.
Finally, on July 2, Guiteau made his move � at the railroad station where Garfield was catching the train to Philadelphia to begin a family vacation. Only Blaine was with him. Guiteau fired two shots, the first grazing Garfield’s elbow and the second lodging in his chest. Ironically, Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham’s son, was at the station at the time of the assassination and rushed to Garfield’s aid. Lincoln summoned Dr. Willard Bliss, a physician he knew, to the scene. Thereafter, Dr. Bliss assumed responsibility for Garfield’s care. He dismissed other physicians who had offered to help, claiming that the Garfields had put him in charge, although no one in Garfield’s inner circle remembers ever giving Bliss such a charge. Over the next few months, Garfield’s condition waxed and waned until he finally succumbed to the infection resulting from the doctors� probing of his wound with unwashed hands and dirty instruments, as well as their use of treatment methods that were nothing short of bizarre � like anal infusions.
Guiteau’s copious writings show that he was comfortable with his dastardly deed, seeing it as God’s will and his patriotic duty. Indeed, after the assassination, he wrote to Chester Arthur seeking thanks for increasing Arthur’s salary from $8,000 to $50,000 and for elevating him from political lackey to the nation’s chief executive.
Guiteau’s trial began about two months after Garfield’s death � remarkably quick by today’s standards. Guiteau was represented by his brother-in-law, and served as his own co-counsel � engaging in many disruptive outbursts during the trial. A lynchpin of the defense was that Guiteau had become deranged as a result of his membership in the Oneida Community, which received lots of negative publicity at the trial and which dissolved as a result of those revelations. The jury saw it differently and convicted Guiteau of all charges. He was sentenced to death and executed the following June. Right up until the hangman placed the noose around his neck, Guiteau believed that Arthur would grant him a pardon.
After his execution, Guiteau became something of a macabre curiosity. A cottage industry of Guiteau souvenirs developed � clothes he wore, furniture he used, etc. Guiteau’s skeleton was preserved and can be found today in the Army Medical Museum, while a portion of his brain resides in Philadelphia’s Mutter Museum. Time for your next field trip?
If there is a flaw in this compact, fast-paced, interesting book, it is that Wels tries to do too much. For example, while the Oneida Community is infinitely fascinating, I am left with the impression that it played only a minor role in Guiteau’s decision to become a presidential assassin. Thus, the suggestion implicit in the book’s title that Guiteau’s experience there was pivotal is misleading.
Similarly, there are interesting accounts of Greeley’s path to founding the New York Tribune, P.T. Barnum’s road to the circus, and Rutherford B. Hayes� travails in office. But these tales are at most tangentially related to Garfield’s assassination. There was, moreover, no need for Wels to devote so much space to the bungled treatment of Garfield’s wound; that topic has been explored extensively by other researchers, most notably Candace Millard in her “Destiny of the Republic.� It seems as though, in the course of her research, Wels found a bunch of really interesting tidbits and was determined to use them even though they had little if anything to do with her narrative � sort of like this review.
I am also bothered because, while Wels claims to have spent 12 years writing this book, she relies principally on secondary sources. In particular, she frequently cites Allan Peskin’s monumental “Garfield� � in my mind, still the best book ever written about this titan of American history. Thus, I cannot help feeling just a little underwhelmed by Wels� scholarship.
So, the book is superficial and � How can I say this delicately? � is a bit of a mess. But it is a breezy read, and there’s lots of deviant sex, violence, and political intrigue. If you are not looking for something deeper, if you are an assassination junkie, and/or if you are a committed Garfield fan, this book is for you.
September 13, 2023
Charles Guiteau is the connection between the utopian free-love cult and the presidential assassination of the books title. But this book is more than an account of Guiteau’s journey from cult member to assassin. It takes side trips into the lives of Horace Greeley, several presidents, P.T. Barnum, and many more mid-19th century figures. This felt like a feature article stretched into a book. I enjoyed the chapters about the politics surrounding Garfield’s election and Guiteau’s grandiosity, but too much of this felt like filler. 2.5 stars
July 26, 2024
I liked the way the author linked many cultural and historical happenings that weave into the main story. A fascinating time in a young nation’s history the has many echoes to our times today. (Fun personal item, I recognized the Conkling name from my genealogy research. Turns out Roscoe is my 6th cousin, 6 times removed. And we share the same birthday!)
February 19, 2023
“An Assassin in Utopia,� covers a lot of territory of the late 19th Century, discussing a wide range of seemingly unrelated characters, primarily Charles Guiteau, the assassin of President James A. Garfield. But author Susan Wels also included an eclectic variety of other figures from that era, including a few long forgotten spiritualists, showman P.T. Barnum, well known newspaper publisher Horace Greeley, preacher and free love advocate John Noyes, and significant political figures of the era including NY Senator Roscoe Conkling, Maine Senator James Blaine, Presidents U.S. Grant, Chester A. Arthur, Rutherford B. Hayes, etc.
Guiteau is central to the book, and is shown to be an erratic figure with illusions of grandeur. He tried and failed a number of endeavors, including joining a free-love enclave in upstate NY, becoming a lawyer, and trying his hand as a political influencer.
I suspect the mention of the Oneida free-love religious community, started by preacher John Humphrey Noyes, was added to the book simply to spice up the narrative. It's importance, other than to provide a look at differenct segments of society at the time, was lost on me. Regardless, Charles Guiteau had been a member of this free-love group, but left when none of the women would pay any attention to him. It's not clear if joining that community influenced him in any significant way. After bouncing around for a while in different jobs and in different locations, Guiteau eventually tried attaching himself to the Garfield Presidential campaign of 1880. He apparently felt these efforts entitled him to an appointment as foreign service representative to France or Austria, and perhaps could become a future President. Badly mistaken, rejected and isolated, Guiteau eventually got the idea that Garfield was harmful to the Republican Party. He concluded that it necessary to assassinate recently elected James Garfiled in order to allow Chester A. Arthur to assume the presidency and unite the Republican Party, and actually thought he would be celebrated for this deed. He proved to be wrong, of course, and was eventually convicted of murder and hanged.
Guiteau is central to the book, and is shown to be an erratic figure with illusions of grandeur. He tried and failed a number of endeavors, including joining a free-love enclave in upstate NY, becoming a lawyer, and trying his hand as a political influencer.
I suspect the mention of the Oneida free-love religious community, started by preacher John Humphrey Noyes, was added to the book simply to spice up the narrative. It's importance, other than to provide a look at differenct segments of society at the time, was lost on me. Regardless, Charles Guiteau had been a member of this free-love group, but left when none of the women would pay any attention to him. It's not clear if joining that community influenced him in any significant way. After bouncing around for a while in different jobs and in different locations, Guiteau eventually tried attaching himself to the Garfield Presidential campaign of 1880. He apparently felt these efforts entitled him to an appointment as foreign service representative to France or Austria, and perhaps could become a future President. Badly mistaken, rejected and isolated, Guiteau eventually got the idea that Garfield was harmful to the Republican Party. He concluded that it necessary to assassinate recently elected James Garfiled in order to allow Chester A. Arthur to assume the presidency and unite the Republican Party, and actually thought he would be celebrated for this deed. He proved to be wrong, of course, and was eventually convicted of murder and hanged.
February 27, 2023
When the US was a young country Alexis DeTocqueville came here and found a remarkable voluntary spirit many things that were done in Europe by government were accomplished by groups of neighbors. Part of what he described was a willingness to experiment. Part of those experiments were utopian efforts of communal living including breaking the traditional bounds of matrimony. Perhaps one of the most prominent communities was led by a man named John Henry Noyes. Noyes went to Yale Divinity School (where he was thrown out). He founded a community which was successful in many ways.
The US was a small country at the time but Wels does an amazing job of tying several US presidents (from Lincoln to Arthur), PT Barnum, a couple of prominent politicians especially the redoubtable Roscoe Conkling and Charles Guiteau (the absolute loon who lived in the Oneida community for a time). What Wels does very well is combine all these threads into a coherent narrative which gives you a good idea of what the middle part of the nineteenth century was like.
The US was a small country at the time but Wels does an amazing job of tying several US presidents (from Lincoln to Arthur), PT Barnum, a couple of prominent politicians especially the redoubtable Roscoe Conkling and Charles Guiteau (the absolute loon who lived in the Oneida community for a time). What Wels does very well is combine all these threads into a coherent narrative which gives you a good idea of what the middle part of the nineteenth century was like.
February 21, 2023
As a self-proclaimed history nerd, I found this book to have fascinating insights on a relatively little known period in the 19th century. The Garfield assassination is arguably one of the most overlooked tragedies in history and this book does a good job highlighting some previously unknown elements of Garfield’s personal life, the nutty life of his assassin, Charles Guiteau, and the steamy lives of the Oneida group (who knew there was such a free-love style group back then?). Very interesting and well-written. I recommend it for all history lovers.
February 23, 2023
This is a well researched .and shocking book. It's well written and very interesting. The author draws a line from the Oneida Community to the assassination of President Garfield.
Charles Guiteau in his crazed mind believed he could unify the country by assassinating a political figure.
So many of the famous figures in American history are intertwined in this history.
The political parallels between then and now are quite striking, a divided Republican Party, Crazy sex cults, political machinations.
Charles Guiteau in his crazed mind believed he could unify the country by assassinating a political figure.
So many of the famous figures in American history are intertwined in this history.
The political parallels between then and now are quite striking, a divided Republican Party, Crazy sex cults, political machinations.
February 25, 2023
Life in mid-19th century America was absolutely bananas, and this book wraps it all up in a lithe, brisk narrative of sex cults, assassins, shysters and entrepreneurs, political rivalries and patronage, social castes, weird food, weirder medical practices, even weirder philosophical thinking, newspaper publishing, westward expansion, wealth, poverty, circuses and steamship collisions. Jesus. This book has it all, name-dropping the period characters like lyrics to a lost Dylan tune: Greeley, Garfield, Twain, Marx, P.T. Barnum, Roscoe Conkling and Chester Arthur, female Civil War spies dressed in men's array, free-love communes, Emerson, Thoreau, Guiteau, Garfield, U.S. Grant, sister psychics, Darwin, Margaret Fuller ... and on and on. It's like a romp through the Old, Weird America of Greil Marcus's fancy. Can't recommend it enough.
February 15, 2024
Awful narration but the book itself was fine. I would recommend reading not listening to this one. Lots of morbid tidbits about Garfield and salacious details about the Oneidas aka my favorite social experiment. I wish it had focused more on the Oneida community than the political climate. But since I’m interested in the time period, it didn’t bother me TOO much that the author didn’t stick to one topic (there’s long digressions about Horace Greeley, Ulysses Grant, etc.), but I can see how it would be bothersome if you are expecting a straightforward story.
October 2, 2024
Q: What do Martin VanBurren, Horace Greeley, Ulysses S. Grant, and P.T. Burnum have to do with the story of a murderous 19th century sex cult?
A: Not much. But that does not prevent the author from writing thousands upon thousands of words about each of these people!
I felt like I got to know so very much about Horace Greeley... His parents, siblings, wife, beliefs, career. The first third of this book is practically a Greeley biography. Imagine my dismay when not even half way through the story he dies... And left me wondering "Wait? What was his role in the story exactly?"
Pro tip: Whenever you reach a section about a well known personality (example: P.T. Barnum) or a US President, unless you are actually interested in that person, it is safe to skip that section. Their linkage to the cult is likely somewhere between tenuous and non-existant. Of course that means you may end up skimming/skipping a considerably large amount of this book.
Even the assissin around whom the title revolves, Charles Guiteau, didn't have that strong a linkage to the cult... He was kicked out of it... TWICE.
Strange book. Felt like it was trying to knit together a story from a lot of very disparate pieces. A better title might have been "A Comprehensive History of the Whacky and Wild 1800s" or similar. But I guess that wouldn't sell as many copies as a book about a sex cult.
A: Not much. But that does not prevent the author from writing thousands upon thousands of words about each of these people!
I felt like I got to know so very much about Horace Greeley... His parents, siblings, wife, beliefs, career. The first third of this book is practically a Greeley biography. Imagine my dismay when not even half way through the story he dies... And left me wondering "Wait? What was his role in the story exactly?"
Pro tip: Whenever you reach a section about a well known personality (example: P.T. Barnum) or a US President, unless you are actually interested in that person, it is safe to skip that section. Their linkage to the cult is likely somewhere between tenuous and non-existant. Of course that means you may end up skimming/skipping a considerably large amount of this book.
Even the assissin around whom the title revolves, Charles Guiteau, didn't have that strong a linkage to the cult... He was kicked out of it... TWICE.
Strange book. Felt like it was trying to knit together a story from a lot of very disparate pieces. A better title might have been "A Comprehensive History of the Whacky and Wild 1800s" or similar. But I guess that wouldn't sell as many copies as a book about a sex cult.
July 18, 2023
Good NF read, definitely one of those that makes me question if we have learned nothing from history (contentious election in 1873 that mirrors that of 2020 except those causing political unrest had their votes taken away). Book title is "click-bait" and the book delves a lot deeper into the politics of the Reconstruction time period than the cult itself.
June 4, 2024
The title is a bit misleading as the “sex cult� doesn’t figure into it nearly as much as the subtitle would imply. Essentially, it’s the backstory of President Garfield’s assassination in 1881 and Charles Guiteau, the fool who shot him (for a brief time Guiteau had belonged to the Oneida commune, but they kicked him out for being insane). If you’re interested in learning about US politics from 1870-1881 check it out.
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February 23, 2023Even if you’re no expert on American history, you will have your finger on its pulse while reading AN ASSASSIN IN UTOPIA: THE TRUE STORY OF A NINETEENTH-CENTURY SEX CULT AND A PRESIDENT'S MURDER by Susan Wels.
Read the full review on Booktrib.com
Read the full review on Booktrib.com
January 3, 2024
I have the same complaint about this book as the rest of the reviewers. It is all over the place. There is no thesis nor through line.
With that said, I gave it four stars due to once I realized it was all over the place, the anecdotal stuff seems to be well researched and actually quite interesting.
Realize what you're getting into and you will probably enjoy it.
With that said, I gave it four stars due to once I realized it was all over the place, the anecdotal stuff seems to be well researched and actually quite interesting.
Realize what you're getting into and you will probably enjoy it.
July 8, 2024
Well written and entertaining. Fast read. I had known about 19th century utopian societies but the Oneida Community's Charles Guiteau interweaving with Horace Greeley, PT Barnum and Presidents Grant, Hayes, and Garfield was new. Guiteau assassinated Garfield.
March 21, 2023
Doesn’t really match its premise but as a time capsule into the changing country of 1800s America, it works very well. A good mini-companion to What Hath God Wrought. Worth your time.
May 5, 2023
WTF! How was this happening. Oh wait...this is happening now! History repeats itself!
August 26, 2023
Should be fascinating.
It is not 😕.
I don’t even know how the murderer is connected to the cult, let alone the former president.
It is not 😕.
I don’t even know how the murderer is connected to the cult, let alone the former president.
February 11, 2024
1.5 stars
This is not a well organized book at all / I’m not convinced that the premise this book is selling itself on (the linkage of the sex cult utopian community and the presidential assassination) is even connected really. Actually really liked the writing and the stories, the history was well told but this book was an invertebrate the way it lacked a backbone.
This is not a well organized book at all / I’m not convinced that the premise this book is selling itself on (the linkage of the sex cult utopian community and the presidential assassination) is even connected really. Actually really liked the writing and the stories, the history was well told but this book was an invertebrate the way it lacked a backbone.
November 24, 2024
Can’t remember who recommended this� but it was weird.
January 30, 2025
Very disjointed and poorly researched/written. Didn't even finish it, wouldn't recommend it.
January 31, 2025
“It seemed like a sylvan paradise.�
3.5💫
Not enough direction or cult.
3.5💫
Not enough direction or cult.
February 20, 2025
This was like 75% backstory and random information but entertaining enough.
February 11, 2023
Fun!
So much old is new again. What a tale! A must read for any history buff. I’ll never look at my dishes the same way again.
So much old is new again. What a tale! A must read for any history buff. I’ll never look at my dishes the same way again.
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