Paradise Mislaid Anne Whitehead by Anne Whitehead 9781925283600, 1925283607 instant download after payment.

In the 1890s after a period of social unrest, a brave band of Australians sailed from Sydney to found a communal Utopia in South America. Under the charismatic journalist William Lane, over 500 settlers, including poet Mary Gilmore, created a New Australia in the Paraguayan jungle. Their hopes soon collapsed. Many returned home. Others stayed, becoming part of the culture of their adopted country. They learned about Paraguay's Jesuit missions of the 17th and 18th centuries, perhaps the world's most successful communal settlements which were disbanded in violence, the country's catastrophic wars, its revolutions, its repressive dictators, and about another communal experiment led by Elisabeth Nietzsche and Bernhard Forster to create an Aryan master race.
Anne Whitehead made three journeys to Paraguay over 12 years and, in a vivid blend of biography and travel writing, uncovers stories of the original colonists and their descendants. Some fought for the British Empire in World War I, others defended Paraguay against Bolivia in the 1932-35 Chaco War; they witnessed the arrival of Nazi war criminals, the manhunt of forest Indians and endured the 35-year dictatorship of President Alfredo Stroessner.