Cities on a Hill

by Frances FitzGerald

We must consider that we shall be A City Upon a Hill, the eyes of all people upon us, John Winthrop told his Pilgrim community crossing the Atlantic to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Four centuries later, Americans are still building Cities Upon a Hill.
In Cities on a Hill Pulitzer Prize-winner Frances FitzGerald explores this often eccentric, sometimes prophetic inclination in America. With characteristic wit and insight she examines four radically different communities -- a fundamentalist church, a guru-inspired commune, a Sunbelt retirement city, and a gay activist community -- all embodying this visionary drive to shake the past and build anew.
Frances FitzGerald here gives eloquent voice and definition to a quintessentially American impulse. It is a resonant work of literary imagination and journalistic precision.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Religion, Sociology, The United States Of America, LGBT, Social Science

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Frances FitzGerald is an American journalist and historian.

Reviews

[Roo O'brien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great long form journalism that examines four apparently different American communities that arose out the convulsions of the sixties and what Fitzgerald describes as the quintessentially American notion that you can start all over again from scratch. With time some of the detail of litigation and whatnot has become a little dry - she is best when she takes a step back and looks at the wider patterns. The incredible denouement of Rajneeshpuram was documented by her and Netflix but the other communities appear to still be going strong…. An updated epilogue would be fascinating.

[Francis Opila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, insightful depictions of communities in the in the 1970's and 80's. Particulary good depictions of The Castro district in San Francisco and Rajneeshpuram in Oregon. The author formulates opinions that may have some bias, but I found myself generally in agreement with her. I have some friends who spent time at Rajneeshpuram - they clearly had a different experience than the overall chaos/insanity that Sheela and her gang generated.

[Margie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've just re-read this book for the second or third time. In addition to having a great (though certainly not exhaustive) history of The Castro, this book examines community on a number of levels. Well-written, well-researched, and interesting to read.

[Jerrod · Rating 2 out of 5]

One sentence review: Overall, each chapter read like a very long New Yorker article, and while Fitzgerald provided lots of detail, I came away with little understanding of what made each community tick and what similarities they had between them.

This collection of journalistic accounts of various subcultures in the US (gays in the Castro, evangelicals at Falwell's church, retirees in Sun City, FL, and the Rajneeshi's in Oregon) is worth reading if you are interested in the topic. While Fitzgerald is good on the details of life in the subcultures (and various biographical sketches), Cities on a Hill is extremely light on theoretical grounding for what makes these groups tick and what makes them all belong in the same book, and the main theoretical claims come in the last chapter (note that Fitzgerald is not really offering any novel insights but is applying and summarizing theories of other researchers). Most of those theories try to predict why we might see the emergence of subcultures based solely on changes within the larger society and (as presented in the last chapter) do not fully consider the characteristics of the communities themselves and how the interaction between characteristics of the larger society and subculture affect individual choices (an approach using methodological individualism seems a more appropriate tool for). The last chapter gives a brief overview of subcultures that have popped up in American history and repeatedly notes the willingness of the middle class to engage in these groups. 

The most interesting chapter is the one on the Castro. Fitzgerald notes the varieties of groups that make up this community and how the heavily-policed discourse around the connection between the spread of AIDS and a sexually promiscuous lifestyle (an observation that would be considered a violation of political correctness (at least in San Francisco)) probably killed many people. Fitzgerald's extended discussion of the trial of Harvey Milk's murderer, while informative, seemed to be included to exercise some of her thoughts and armchair psychologizing rather than shedding light on understanding the Castro community. 

The chapter on Falwell was very informative, but I felt at some point I might need a towel to wipe the tangible disdain dripping from the pages. 

Here is some lazy theorizing about the retirees in Sun City: "Their political philosophy, after all, assumes the wide-open spaces; it is one of unbridled competition, of freedom from social restriction, and even from society itself. Their pleasures, however, are golf and bridge -- games for people who love competition but also love rules. They are games for problem-solvers -- orderly, conservative people who like to know where the limits are. The harmonious, man-made landscape of a golf course is like a board game writ large -- or like Sun City itself. It's not for loners or rugged individualists but for sociable people who value traditions, conventions, and etiquette." So if you voted for Reagan and think the government should apply a soft hand when it comes to regulation (which Fitzgerald construes as holding the philosophical view of atomistic individualism), you can't play bridge or golf without being seen as not true to your values? I guess frontier cowboys didn't play cards, either.

[Virginprune · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, well, well. So i finally pick up a book that's been sitting on my shelf for three decades.

I'm not exactly sure what put me off reading it till now, but the net effect is that the content has swung all the way round from "dated" to "interesting". Instead of seeing history (and present) through the prism of 1985, seeing history (as perceived in 1985) through the prism of 30-odd years of perspective...

The book comprises four sections, studying different "communities" in the USA in the early-mid 1980s: The Castro, the San Francisco gay district; Jerry Falwell's Liberty Baptist Church; Sun City, a retirement community in Florida; and the Rajneeshpuram cult settlement in Oregon. There is also a relatively brief concluding chapter, called "Starting Over".

As far as I can see, the Rajneeshpuram section (the largest, by far) was the most critically acclaimed at the time of publication. At first sight, it seems the most anachronistic right now, in that everything else is still "going on". But actually, a sideways glance at the last 4 years or so of American history show this to be perhaps the most illustrative of all the texts.

In the concluding section, an effort is made to unite the above topics, by reference to the turbulent period of American social history, notably in upstate New York, in the 1820s, drawing parallels with the 1960s. I think the "lessons learned" here would be rewritten for a 21st century audience, but I draw attention to the following, referring to a "conspiracy theory" of the time:
"Anti-Masonry was in some sense the McCarthyism of the day; at any rate the results were much the same. In Rochester and cities like it, the political elite became passionately divided over an issue that was largely trumped up, and that in any case had nothing to do with the real problems of the day. Whether the Masons or the non-Masons won the elections now mattered little, for neither had a mandate to deal with the real issues, and one group would automatically oppose the solutions of the other, no matter how reasonable they were."

[Akshay Jaggi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellently researched and well written, this dive into "utopian" communities of the 70s-80s is certainly an important and educational read. While the first two chapters are strong (the Castro and Falwell), I think the second two chapters (Sun City and Rajneeshpuram) really lose steam. Sun City is rather short and poorly fleshed out relative to the first two chapters. On the other hand, Rajneeshpuram is way too long and goes into exhaustive detail on some rather boring aspects of the Rajneeshee. Furthermore, the strings that pull the four stories together get increasingly tenuous the deeper you get into the later chapters.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating account of four groups in the US; each of which tries of be a community banding together binding that which they have in common. Though somewhat dated, Fitzgerald writes with a unique style. My favorite chapter was Castro Street. 3.5 stars

[Julian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book a long long time ago. All I can remember is that it's very good.

It is perhaps the best description of the “fall of Rajneeshpuram” that I have read.

[David Bradshaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Various communities were well summed up in her ending chapter

Her insights are particularly relevant in today's Society

[Laina · Rating 4 out of 5]

2022 Book # 2

I bought this used in trade paper and I was really only interested in the chapter on Rajneespuram and I feel like I got my money's worth. Although Rajneeshpuram was established and dismantled in my lifetime and its downfall chronicled through major news sources at the time, I apparently wasn't paying attention then as I was just a teen. I became aware of Bhagwan aka Rashneesh aka Osho through the Netflix series Wild Wild Country. From there I immediately bought Jane Stork's autobiography "Breaking the Spell" but put it away for nearly a year before binge reading it and finishing it in 2 days. I got hooked on researching more about Bhagwan and how he managed to recruit and retain his followers and the Rajneeshpuram chapter in Cities on the Hill was part of this journey. I do now feel satisfied in understanding the allure Bhagwan had over his followers. The next question is what really made it devolve into the cult once they left Pune. I suspect Sheela had a lot to do with it. My next book will be the Golden Guru to see if any more questions get answered. After that, I'm probably onto my next topic of interest, whatever that may be.

[Vicky Pinpin-Feinstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this book back in the mid-1980s when I was a graduate student and it was required reading for one of my classes. I knew back then that someday I will read it again and read it I did. The second time around is no less satisfying. Fitzgerald has all the gifts required of a journalist and a writer. She communities she explored, observed, studied and then wrote about really provided an exploration of visionary communities vis-a-vis the American Dream. And for those who are not native born Americans, this book fulfills that yearning to learn about American culture and communities in far more subtle but profound ways, so different for how one would learn them in a civics class. I also read it this time not just for her journalistic technique but for her writing style. It would be interesting to find out what happened to these communities at present, excluding of course the demise of the Rajneespuram community.

[Tiffany · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was 18 this was one of the first non-fiction books I read for pleasure. How did I find this? Was it that I had read an article by Ms. Fitzgerald in Rolling Stone? Who knows.

It was a freaking page-turner! The section that discussed the Rashneesh Puram in Oregon was so fantastic I still remember much of it. She is such a smooth writer you don't have to be exceptionally smart or academic to enjoy it.

[E.S.O. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cults of all shapes and sizes! Who woulda thought a book about cults could be so boring. It had a really academic style.