Odds are you haven't heard of the Saint-Simonians, which is regrettable, because they are both absolutely wild and surprisingly influential.

They were a primarily French group who, after the death of their mentor Henri Saint-Simon, went on to develop and evangelize his ideas (and the new ideas they developed from his starting points) in an intense burst of activity from around 1825 to 1835. The Saint-Simonian movement was socialist, but also unrepentantly bourgeois; they were authoritarian but feminist, imperialist but pacifist — and simultaneously an organization of sober engineers and bankers around ideas of socioeconomic reform, and a messianic cult. They were later criticized by thinkers as different as Marx and Hayek. But many Saint-Simonians, despite the embarrassment of the group's cult phase, went on to positions of supreme prominence in France during the July Monarchy and Second Empire.

In this history, Carlisle tells the story of the group from its beginnings to the group's dissolution amid schism and legal troubles, with a focus on their evolving religious viewpoints and growing control by the man who eventually became their leader, "father" and "pope": Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin. Carlisle is not a Saint-Simonian himself but is sympathetic to their views, and takes pains to defend them against what he sees as unfair attacks from critics of all stripes. I wish he had spent a little less time detailing the minute details of the group's descent from social movement into utopian cult, and a little more time discussing the ways its former members applied Saint-Simonian principles to remake France's economy in subsequent decades (those were mentioned, but in summary mode, rather than in detail). I also think it would have benefitted from a little more context about other utopian movements springing up around the world at this time. Still, this is a story of a fascinating and overlooked group, engagingly told, with plenty of interesting background about the era. ( )