Start at Chapter One and read about the Satellite, Etzler’s mysterious machine, a cross between a plow and the Batmobile. The Satellite encompasses Etzler’s entire scheme, all his knowledge of physics and geology, and the hope that the physical forces of the Earth could be captured, liberating industrial workers from poverty wages and factory discipline. Etzler styled himself a utopian socialist like the many others who wrote and lectured during the 1840s, but he rejected politics. Instead, he believed that technology—in the form of his Satellite and other inventions—along with the inherent resources and energies of Earth (wind, sun, and ocean tides) would bring about a revolution beyond the imaginations of Robert Owen, the English utopian, and François Marie Charles Fourier, the French socialist who exerted the greatest influence on Etzler. All would happen without social conflict. In effect, Etzler spoke the same line as Jack Kempt—doubling the economy would create wealth, eliminating the need for its redistribution.All of these hopes took the odd form of the Satellite, a machine that Etzler claimed could perform every landed task—digging mines, planting seeds, cutting trees, and more. It did this while generating all its own power and could be operated by two people. The leaders of the Tropical Emigration Society hosted a trial for the Satellite in 1845, in which 800 people gathered in a field outside Oxford, England. The much anticipated colony in Venezuela, the trust and hopes of thousands of working-class members, and Etzler’s authority all depended on the machine.

The final chapter of the book brings the argument up to the present. I wrote The Great Delusion for another reason. I have been deluded myself, and never more so than when I go to Costco. Costco hangs in the background of the entire book, not because of any policy of its management but because of the enormous statement it makes about consumption and abundance. Everything comes in giant quantities, from all parts of the world, and the stock is replenished hourly. Standing at the door, it is possible to watch schools of salmon, forests of Douglas fir, barrels of petroleum, acres of corn and wheat, and appliances that will siphon off untold kilowatt hours of electricity pass out into the parking lot and from there into the households of southern Connecticut. It bothered me—a lot. And if going to Costco seems anything but a journey into utopia, consider that the plenty it offers every day (for low unit prices) differs hardly at all from what utopian writers promised during the 1840s. We would all have whatever we wanted; in fact, the dream commodity of the future for Ralph Waldo Emerson consisted of factory-baked bread. As I say in the book, Etzler did not promise a world to come but the world that came.