"The Angel and the Serpent is a book which combines scholarship and literary grace, and which recreates for us both the world of the Rappites and the Owenites." ―Henry Steele Commager, The New York Times Book Review Here is the story of George Rapp's German Harmonists and Robert Owen's Idealists―the two vastly different communities that shaped the history of New Harmony, Indiana Both the Rappites and the Owenites came to New Harmony to conduct communal living experiments―Rapp expecting the millennium; Owen believing he had brought the millennium with him. William E. Wilson (1906-1988) was a professor of English at Indiana University and the author of numerous books and articles as well as a beloved teacher. The Angel and the Serpent was one of his best known works.