Editor: Iain Boal, Janferie Stone, Michael Watts, Cal Winslow

pt. I. Context.California communes : a venerable tradition by Timothy Miller

Conviviality and perspicacity : evaluating 1960s communitarianism by Michael William Doyle

The counterculture as commons : the ecology of community in the Bay Area by Jeff Lustig

The commune as badlands as utopia as autonomous zone by Jesse Drew

pt. II. The city.Bulldozers in utopia : open land, outlaw territory, and the code wars by Felicity D. Scott

The dome and the shack : the dialectics of hippie enlightenment by Simon Sadler

Occupied Alcatraz : native American community and activism by Janferie Stone

Communalism and the Black Panther party in Oakland, California by Robyn C. Spencer

Magus of the counterculture : Ramón Sender talks with Iain Boalpt. III. The country.The Albion nation : communes on the Mendocino Coast by Cal Winslow

Our bodies, our communal selves by Janferie Stone

pt. IV. Legacies.Green gold and the American way by Ray Raphael

Counterculture, cyberculture, and the third culture : reinventing civilization, then and now by Lee Worden

Caught on the hop of history : communes and communards on the canvas of '68 by Michael Watts

Epilogue by Cal Winslow.

Includes bibliographical references and index

Annotation, This account charts the rise of communalism in the 60s and 70s, as thousands turned their backs on their assigned roles in order to build another world together. Using memoir and flashbacks, the quest to find an alternative to the traditional nuclear family and the consumptive way of living is illuminated

"Focusing on the San Francisco Bay Area and hinterlands, with a deep history and rich legacy of cooperative schemes, West of Eden uses interviews and historical research to present vivid portraits of the rural communes of Mendocino and Sonoma, the Black Panther households in Oakland, the Diggers of Haight-Ashbury, the Native American occupation of Alcatraz, and the hippies' love affair with the Bucky dome."--Back cover