Utopia (Penguin Classics)

Book Description

Revised introduction; new chronology and further reading

Translated with an Introduction by Paul Turner.

Customer Reviews:

A Surprising Saint.......2007-09-26

I suspect that this translation is a paraphrase of the original Latin. Nevertheless, it has the virtue of being lively and very readable. Everyone knows that More is a Catholic saint, which makes much of what he says in Utopia very surprising indeed. The Tudor functionary who persecuted Protestant heretics advocates religious toleration, married priests, the abolition of money and private property, and the pursuit of scientific knowledge as an end in itself. He shows himself to be a thorough rationalist and humanist and a sort of proto-socialist. His criticism of the gross injustice existing between rich and poor is breathtaking when one considers that there was no freedom of conscience or opinion in his time. (Shakespeare never dares to criticize society except when he puts subversive ideas into the mouths of his more disreputable characters.) I think that More made a strict division in his own mind between reason and revelation and that he thought of Utopia as what the ideal society would be like in the absence of the One True Faith. More's tone throughout is pleasantly witty (if the translator has been faithful to the original), as More himself was, even on the scaffold. For those who can read old books, Utopia is well worth the effort.

Utopia: 'a place that does not exist'.......2007-09-03

I first read this book in my impressionable and idealistic youth (some time in the second half of the last century). I've read it a couple of times since then and still enjoy the way that the book can be read as either a satire (my current preferred reading) or as a description of an ideal society.

This is a very short book and well worth reading - even for those of us without Latin who can only read it in translation.

Recommended.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

An Intellectually Fun and Stimulating Read.......2007-04-21

More exhibits intellectual creativity in the classic Utopia, originally written in Latin. It is a narrative on a non-existent, ideal society. The book Utopia includes the Utopian alphabet, a poem in Utopian and then translated into English, lines on the island of Utopia by the poet laureate, More's letters to Peter Gilles, Gilles's letter to Busleiden, Book 1, and Book 2.

The alphabet and poems at the beginning immediately display the creative and structured thought of More, introduce the island of Utopia, and display the humorous wit of More that will continue to make you chuckle throughout the course of the book.

The letters serve as the background to the authoring of books 1 and 2. It adds a sense of reality to them by describing where the subject matter for the books comes from and creating a pretend internal debate about whether or not a book on Utopia should be written by More at all. More's considerations in that staged internal debate are highly enjoyable to any avid reader.

The real fun to this book is how More uses plays on words, he comments on or uses writings of other classic authors, and he parallels or completely contradicts happenings and/or beliefs his own real life holds. For instance, book 1 weaves together completely fictional characters and situations together with real people, situations, and history that have impacted him in reality (This is the same concept of adding truth to falsehood to make falsehood more believable as is displayed in The DaVinci Code). More's talent is further displayed as he is able to discuss social governance issues in the entertaining and more relatable format of dialogue.

Book 2 describes in depth the structure of the Utopian society. It handles everything from governance within Utopia and relations with societies outside of Utopia to the handling of religion and the growth of morals in society members. While More presents some thought provoking concepts and ideas in this book, he clearly states that they are all based on the assumption that there's no such thing as greed, fear of want, or vanity in Utopia (pg 61).

This particular edition of Utopia comes with a short bio of both author and translator. It also includes a time line of More's life, a helpful introduction, further reading suggestions, a note on the text and translation, an appendix, a glossary, and a multitude of footnotes. If you are not already well versed in Latin, the writings of Greek and Latin philosophers, and English history, than I highly recommend you soak in all this added information from the translator and book editor that is included in this edition both before and while you read Utopia.

My only complaint of this edition is that I don't like flipping back and forth between the text of the novel and the notes in the back. I wish they had put the notes at the bottom of the page. Other than that, I really enjoyed this edition of Utopia and applaud More's witty creativity.

A good reflection on Moore's thoughts.......2007-01-04

Not the book everyone thinks it is. Great insight into thoughts on crime in the 12th century (in England).

Literary Garden of Eden.......2006-12-16

This was required reading for a graduate course in the Humanities. A great story and important historical work in literature. History of Utopia begins with Thomas Moore's book in 1516 he coins the phrase Utopia. Ideal societies have been around before like Garden of Eden, city on a hill. For Moore the idea of utopia was intended to be an ironic one. One of the problems you are faced with when reading his utopia is that you cannot really tell when he is serious and when he is being satirical. He writes on the border of the lyrical and satirical, you cannot really tell when he is trying to be funny or serious. The other problem is the Thomas Moore who speaks to us in the story is not the Thomas Moore who actually lived. He wrote himself into a character. He is intending it to be ironic. Utopia is Greek for "Good Place, and "no place." He is punning an ironic two-sided term he clearly intended irony when he wrote this text, which provided the foundation for a new genre for social representation. Now, according to Lewis Mumford, who wrote the book "The Story of Utopia" 1922, one of the first comprehensive studies of Utopian representation in Western Civilization, the word Utopia signifies human folly or human hope, the vain hope of perfection. The vain hope of remaking our own imperfect natures, so that we can establish the blissful harmonious communal life. On one hand, he is entirely playful and paradoxical. Thomas Moore could be bigoted (against Protestants), small minded, not a saint as portrayed. Among all the things, he was a great wit, great sense of humor. On the other hand, it seems that Utopia could be a reflection of his devout Catholicism. He has been represented as a Roman Catholic martyr. In which case you want to take him seriously, altering the model of menses a set of new aims for moral and social objectives. Of course, Moore's death is important to consider in this life he is glorified in the film, "A Man for All Seasons." He was a Renaissance man, he was a lawyer, statesman, Christian humanist a classical scholar an advocate for women's rights he was also Henry 8's Lord Chancellor.

In 1514, he was sent to Flanders to negotiate a wool treaty and while there, he meets and befriends Peter Giles who is the town clerk of Antwerp, and allegedly tells him "It is my intention to write a book about the way a country should be governed according to my principals. But, it is dangerous to write about those things in England while king Henry the 8 wrath is so easily encouraged, I could perhaps write that I met an old sailor in your house and introduce that man as a globetrotter, who had traveled all over the world and had seen places that we don't even know the existence of. What he had seen there was so unbelievable as compared to the life in Europe that the islands the countries he had visited would seem to belong to another world. Therefore, the title of my book will be "Utopia" a word that means "no where." That sailor will have traveled all over Europe and lived sometime in France Germany, and England. That is why he could compare the ideal community he got acquainted with in Utopia, to the ones he got to know in our countries, and that way I would keep myself out of the matter." After he returned to London, he wrote the fist chapter. Now, what would that tell us about the Utopian imagination, the creation the public presentation of a Utopia? Moore was beheaded in 1535; he would not recognize marriage to Ann Boleyn as lawful to the church. In 1534, Henry becomes head of the church, but Moore remains loyal to pope. In 1935, Moore is canonized. We have to take Moore's religion very seriously. Moore thought Protestants should be burned, he was greedy and proud, not a perfect man. Yet he had this wish for a Utopia.

All utopian fictional ideas of mythic proportion occupy kind of distant realm of the afterlife, myth, faith that unite all of these elements in a matter that is so rich and potentially illuminating and invaluable for scholars students that are interested in working across boundaries and in understanding and exploring the value of working across boundaries. Societies woven and inhabited by populations some of them very select, the exceptionally virtuous or blessed in some cases getting there requires a metaphysical transformation, in other cases it requires a harrowing journey that has to be understood as some ways metaphorical and some ways literal. There is always a sense that to reach Utopia requires a transformation of the human self how do we get away from our flaws, how do we get away from our seemingly inevitable and invariable nature of our being.

These places offer anecdotes to painful and tragic realities to human existence. They are historical in nature you cannot understand any utopia, whether it is represented in a sci-fi movie, or novel or feminist utopia; they must be placed in some kind of a historical context. A fascinating proposition to explore, all utopias all acts of the utopian imagination strike us as constituting in one manner or another statements, critiques or observations about the world we occupy at that given moment. Therefore, any utopia is a reflection and study of the world that we are occupying at that given moment and what we wish it were rather than what it is at that moment. Therefore, utopia is a deeply and inescapably a historical manner organizing the human imagination. I don't think any utopia works in a fixed and eternal way because for every generation and every age they have to imagine their own utopia. Of course utopian experiments were not just talking about fiction or wishing it were so, were talking about actual Soviet Revolution of 1917, were looking at movements looking to bring about radical profound social and political changes that are so deeply utopian in nature. So utopians are aesthetic, philosophical, sociological, they are imagined and fictional, but you can look a history and find attempts most of which failed to bring about these kind of communities that Emerson, Thoreau, these 19th century American egalitarian attempts to create the ideal agrarian society. 1960 hippies reawakening movement of going back to the natural and living off the land. Even today's green and ecological revolution you find in them utopian aspects that resonate so richly with the history of envisioning the ideal society, an ideal place.

Oscar Wilde once said "A map of the world that does not include Utopia, is not even worth glancing at for it leaves out the one country at which humanity has always landed, and when humanity lands there it looks out sees a better country set sail. Progress is the realization of utopias." So when we talk about utopias we are not only talking about a desire or a wish or a longing for perfection, we are talking about an order of progress, a way in which we intend to advance, a way in which we envision or imagine improvement and progress. A progress narrative, psychoanalysis is utopian. Freud's theory of psychoanalysis is a scientific expression of the utopian imagination. The idea that where id was, the ego shall be. The idea of a talking story, the idea that we can master our neurosis that we can harness them that we can move from unconscious behavior to conscious behavior. Marxism and all the grand philosophies of the 19th and 20th centuries are grand utopian narratives. Feminism is a grand utopian narrative in and of itself.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in history, psychology, philosophy, and literature.

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Unfortunately too 16th century in its thinking
It's a book
Literary Garden of Eden
Very Satisfied with Product
Utopia: Not As Free As You Might Think

Utopia: Thomas More
Thomas More
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
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ASIN: 0300084293

Book Description

First published in 1516, Saint Thomas More's Utopia is one of the most important works of European humanism. Through the voice of the mysterious traveler Raphael Hythloday, More describes a pagan, communist city-state governed by reason. Addressing such issues as religious pluralism, women's rights, state-sponsored education, colonialism, and justified warfare, Utopia seems remarkably contemporary nearly five centuries after it was written, and it remains a foundational text in philosophy and political theory.

Preeminent More scholar Clarence H. Miller does justice to the full range of More's rhetoric in this new translation. Professor Miller includes a helpful introduction that outlines some of the important problems and issues that Utopia raises, and also provides informative commentary to assist the reader throughout this challenging and rewarding exploration of the meaning of political community.

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First published in 1516, during a period of astonishing political and technological change, Sir Thomas More's utopia depicts an imaginary society free of private property, sexual discrimination and religious intolerance.

Customer Reviews:

Unfortunately too 16th century in its thinking.......2007-10-06

I bought this book because it is a revered "classic". While I am sure More's intent might have been good, and his ideas even acceptable during his time, the main problem with his theory is the lack of freedom allotted to the individuals in his utopia. This sort of thing just does not fly these days.

It's a book.......2007-01-10

I needed Utopia for a class, so whether or not I enjoyed it is pretty much irrelevant. I doubt this book is being read for personal enjoyment, but it wasn't a bad read.

Literary Garden of Eden.......2006-12-16

Very Satisfied with Product.......2006-11-03

I was happy to receive my book in great condition. The process was easy and shipping took but a short time. I was very pleased.

Utopia: Not As Free As You Might Think .......2006-08-19

When Thomas More wrote UTOPIA in 1516, he attempted to postulate how human beings could create a society that would be as nearly perfect as possible. At least that is what is commonly believed that he tried to do. For those who have read his book, they immediately see some troubling issues. The first sticky point is to define what he meant by the term "utopia." Did he mean a totally democratic state; such as the ancient Greeks had, in which each citizen had direct voting in all issues? Or perhaps More was simply updating Plato, who saw his Republic as a society governed by a carefully selected breed of rulers who would rule an equally carefully selected brood of subjects? Or again, was More attempting to strike an impossible balance between the burgeoning rise of Renaissance humanism with a stifling set of conflicting Christian religions? It is too easy for moderns to suggest that he was merely holding up Utopia as a fun-house type mirror by which he wished his contemporaries could see themselves reflected as zigzag images and perhaps be ashamed enough--or exhorted enough--to alter their behavior for the better. We today are tempted to judge his meaning by 20th century standards, which do not always draw a clear distinction among the virtues that More's Renaissance contemporaries took for granted but today we dismiss as outdated, or worse, irrelevant.

The book itself has two parts. The first includes More, who places himself in the book as a traveler to Antwerp who meets Peter Giles, who in turn introduces him to Raphael Hythloday, a name that Moore punningly notes that in Greek means "nonsense speaker." Hythloday mentions that he journeyed with Amerigo Vespucci to America and along the way encountered the mythical land of Utopia. This first part is slow reading in that More does little more than discuss some general reforms of potential benefit to England, most of which involved agrarian, economic, judicial, military, and criminal justice matters, all of which obliquely suggest that what worked in Utopia might work in England as well. It is the second part that has generated considerable controversy as to what More really meant his readers to grasp.

For those who come to the second part of UTOPIA and expect a 16th century version of Eden, the results are profoundly shocking. When More details the basic government setup as one in which its citizens are living in a ruthless police state with the death penalty meted out for a variety of reasons, readers suddenly grasp that Utopia may not be all that different from Plato, who similarly envisioned his society as one free from the degenerating influences of poetry and the basic tenets of free speech. When this sobering concept sinks in, then the term "utopia" begins to lose its cache as a synonym for a land of unrivalled happiness. But if these readers look at Utopia through the eyes of More and not their own, then a different Utopia arises. As an educated classicist fully versed in traditional Christian orthodoxy, More was trained to evaluate any social structure according to the non-Christian but humanistic Cardinal Virtues of wisdom, fortitude, temperance, and justice, and then compare these to the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity. More made it clear that both sets of virtues were needed to make Utopia an enduring entity. More was not optimistic enough to truly believe the social inequities in England (or Utopia for that matter) could be so easily eliminated merely by rearranging the pieces of the social pie. What humans of any society needed to ensure genuine freedom from tyranny was mastery of the far more unmanageable Seven Deadly Sins. Of these More suggests that by downplaying the importance of gold, by limiting the nature and amount of material wealth, and by forcing all citizens from the highest to lowest to share in all types of drudgery, that the worst of the sins, Pride, will be vanquished, thus leaving Utopia as ready to endure in the face of what to other and less advanced societies would be tantalizing but deadly temptations.

What emerges then in Utopia is a mythical land based on equally mythical virtues that can house a citizenry such as never existed in human history nor is likely to. But More felt that even if his contemporaries managed to alter for the better their profligate ways, then a small sliver of Utopia might result. For More and perhaps for us today, that might be good enough.

THE UTOPIA OF SIR THOMAS MOORE INCLUD. ROPER'S LIFE OF MORE AND LETERS OF MORE AND HIS DAUGHTER MARGARET

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THE UTOPIA OF SIR THOMAS MOORE INCLUD. ROPER'S LIFE OF MORE AND LETERS OF MORE AND HIS DAUGHTER MARGARET

Manufacturer: Walter J. Black
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Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000H1CRDU

Three Early Modern Utopias: Thomas More: Utopia / Francis Bacon: New Atlantis / Henry Neville: The Isle of Pines (Oxford World's Classics)

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Prose which still affects our thinking

Three Early Modern Utopias: Thomas More: Utopia / Francis Bacon: New Atlantis / Henry Neville: The Isle of Pines (Oxford World's Classics)
Thomas More , Francis Bacon , and Henry Neville
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 0192838857

Book Description

Thomas More: Utopia/ Francis Bacon: New Atlantis/Henry Neville: The Isle of Pines With the publication of Utopia (1516), Thomas More introduced into the English language not only a new word, but a new way of thinking about the gulf between what ought to be and what is. His Utopia is at once a scathing analysis of the shortcomings of his own society, a realistic suggestion for an alternative mode of social organization, and a satire on unrealistic idealism. Enormously influential, it remains a challenging as well as a playful text. This edition reprints Ralph Robinson's 1556 translation from More's original Latin together with letters and illustrations that accompanied early editions of Utopia. Utopia was only one of many early modern treatments of other worlds. This edition also includes two other, hitherto less accessible, utopian narratives. New Atlantis (1627) offers a fictional illustration of Francis Bacon's visionary ideal of the role that science should play in the modern society. Henry Neville's The Isle of Pines (1668), a precursor of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, engages with some of the sexual, racial, and colonialist anxieties of the end of the early modern period. Together these texts illustrate the diversity of the early modern utopian imagination, as well as the different purposes to which it could be put.

Customer Reviews:

Prose which still affects our thinking.......2000-09-18

Literature before James Joyce, before Jane Austen, before Daniel Defoe: No Ulysses, no Emma, no Robinson Crusoe - for modern readers it is hard to imagine a stock of English literature without the existence of these and other important writers and their `novels'. What kind of literature could one refer to in a pre-novelistic age? As a matter of fact, there were authors, such as Sir Thomas More and Sir Francis Bacon, who wrote prose which, indeed, still affects our thinking. However, neither More nor Bacon used English, but chose Latin as their original means of expression. For what reasons? And none of these authors was in fact a free-lance writer - they were all occupied in public and political spheres. What made them actually write fictional works? How does their fiction relate to their cultural environment - or, what was regarded as `fiction'? These texts cover a century of political, religious, scientific and literary debates and gave rise to a new understanding of knowledge, and introduced influential literary devices.

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Literary Garden of Eden
A great translation of a timeless classic
Breath taking
Unreal dream.
Between the Middle Ages and the future

Utopia (Norton Critical Editions)
Thomas More
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0393961451

Customer Reviews:

Literary Garden of Eden.......2006-12-16

A great translation of a timeless classic.......2006-06-28

This edition of Thomas More's Utopia is expertly translated by Adams from the Latin and easy to read. Adams' footnotes are informative and often times a hilarious edition to More's work.

Taking a more modern approach to More, Adam's footnotes suggest that perhaps More does not take his perfect society literally, and expects the reader to read between the lines and see that such a society is obviously not possible. This is a theory of More's thought processes that I agree with, so I found this translation and Adam's thoughts quite welcome and agreeable.

However, there are many schools of thought on the issue as to whether More was completely serious about the suggested society in Utopia, although a knowledge of More as a person would suggest that he employed a subtle sarcasm throughout his life, and therefore it is not a stretch to suggest that Utopia was laced with this same humor and etched with ironic impossibilities that More hoped an educated person would be able to see.

Additionally, the fact that More places himself as a character in the book, and narrates through the use of a man whose name literally translated means "nonsense-peddler" leaves little doubt in my mind that to take More's Utopia at face-value is to do a disservice to More, the intellectual scholar that he was, and Utopia itself.

Breath taking.......2003-08-04

The vivid imagery in this book is so absolutely unbelievable, it's breath taking.

What would a perfect society do? Say? Eat? Sir Thomas More gives his version of the perfect society in all its splendor in Utopia.

This book is throughly enjoyable for people 12 and above. If you've ever dreamed of a perfect society this is the book for you.

Unreal dream........2002-11-01

Thomas More dreams of a world of tolerance and antimilitarism, but also of collectivism and anticapitalism (a world without money). For him, a world based on private property cannot be prosperous and just. He considered all treaties between prosperous states as a conspiracy of riches.
So, he was more radical than the most diehard leftist of today.
His principal targets are kings, religious authorities and the landowners with their disastrous policy of enclosures, driving all farmers and their families into certain poverty and death.
He gives us also a juicy mockery of the Swiss, who sold themselves as mercenaries to the highest bidders.
This book is still a worth-while read.

Between the Middle Ages and the future.......2002-03-13

Thomas More's incredible, influential work, has one foot in the Middle Ages and the other in the Renaissance. More reflects on the Middle Ages, but was not yet ready for the Lutheran reformation. More offers both humor (for example, using gold as chamber pots), and political thinking on capitalism. I however think his Utopia is a reflection of the monastic system (without severe asceticism) rather than communism. I'm sure it is no accident that geographic the island of Utopia is similar to England. It is ironic that More did not heed Raphael's advice about servitude to the king. The inclusion of the humanist letters adds further to the humor.

Customer Reviews:

Ok, but not excellent.......2003-03-07

I'm an upper level French student, and this was the anthology used in one of my classes. I've found that there's a wide variety of authors, although from what I understand, this was not true of past editions which excluded women writers. More importantly, there's a variety of genres, including plays and poetry as well as the typical novels. Sadly, in some cases the works showcased are not necessarily the authors' most important works, which bothers me a bit. There's certain texts that you think would be necessary for students of French literature to read that are sadly absent. This may simply be because I'm judging the popularity of texts from an American perspective while in France they have very different ideas of what's necessary. . .

The thing that bothered me the most, however, was that this is intended for survey classes and touches on each author and work only very briefly. This is not so much a problem with the poetry as with the novels and plays. I wasn't able to develop an interest for any of these works because there are only excerpts. The rest of the novel is, more often than not, summed up in less than three sentences. The excerpts are fine for pointing outthe stylistic details of the writing, but it doesn't allow the student to invest in the characters or the plot. In other French lit survey classes I've taken, the professor did require us to read a few complete novels or chose short stories and novellas, rather than excerpts from books. I found that to be more effective and did a better job of inspiring me to look up other works by those authors.

Book Description

The original CliffsNotes study guides offer expert commentary on major themes, plots, characters, literary devices, and historical background. The latest generation of titles in this series also feature glossaries and visual elements that complement the classic, familiar format.

In CliffsNotes on Utopia & Utopian Literature, you discover the Utopian movement that Thomas More helped usher in with his complex work, Utopia. In the book, More tells of a debate between three characters (himself being one of the characters) on how 16th-century society can be improved to eliminate the corruptions and inequities of life.

Summaries and commentaries take you through the book, and critical essays help you understand the Utopian theme and the impact of Utopia on literature. Other features that help you study include

A section on the life and background of Thomas More
A section on the historical background of the book
Critical essays on the composition of Utopia and how the book relates to Communism
Review questions and essay topics
A selected bibliography

Classic literature or modern modern-day treasure — you'll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides.

Customer Reviews:

Great Survey of Utopian Literature & Ideals.......2005-01-29

Why in the world am I reviewing a set of Cliff notes? Mainly because I was intrigued & impressed by the sections devoted to the history of the utopian literature genre. Those sections, which gave a historical and literary context to More's work, made reading these notes very worthwhile. Of course these notes also cover the standard topics you'd expect from the Cliff Notes series, such as the chapter-by-chapter summary of "Utopia" and a biography of Sir Thomas More. But I think the notes' broader survey of utopian ideals that makes them interesting. They show us how the theme appears in everything from Plato's Republic to Gulliver's Travels to Russian Communism and elsewhere. And of course, since they're Cliff notes, they're a quick read.

Two-thirds of the notes are devoted to analyzing More's book, which was first published in 1516. More was the first to coin the term "utopia", which literally means nowhere. He describes a fictional society where people work 5 hour workdays, mostly in the trades. They relax with reading, lectures, and parlor games. They are under benevolent rule by carefully selected officials of superior intelligence and integrity. They use uniform, unpretentious clothing and housing, and dine in communal dining halls. There is no money or private property; every man works for the good of the community, rather than just himself. Each is free from anxieties, knowing he is rich in the sense he owns his share of everything.

The notes go on to discuss how some have tried to bring utopian ideals to the real world. For example, the Fourierism movement 1830's and 1840's created many experimental communities in the US. These communities had emphasized joint labor, the communal raising of children, simplicity, uniformity of dress, pacifism, rigid codes of behavior, and rule by wise elders as officials. There's also a section in the notes on the relationship of Utopia to Communism; the two are of course similar, but definitely not identical.

The notes also cover the anti-utopias described in 1984 and Brave New World. The societies in both these novels are dysfunctional, though in different ways. In 1984, as you probably remember, the population is ruled by force - a totalitarian political party controls the masses through propaganda, surveillance cameras, secret police, and torture. There are historical parallels here to Stalinist Russia, or WWII Germany. In contrast, Brave New World is about ruling the population through pleasures; universal happiness is provided through elaborate sports, entertainment, and ritualized social activities as well as happiness-inducing drugs. Social stability is maintained through a class system created through selective artificial gestation & elaborate psychological conditioning so people accept their roles and get along with others. Some say that the "Brave New World" reflects some features that are found in today's capitalistic societies.

Overall, though, I thought the sections of these notes about the literary history of the Utopian theme, as well as the real-world examples of utopian communities, were even more interesting than the sections devoted to More's Utopia itself. If those themes seem interesting to you, then by all means pick up a copy of these notes & read the ~25 pages devoted to those topics.

Wow! Who would have thought!.......2000-08-25

I wrote my senior thesis on Utopia and The Republic, illustrating the common theme of what makes a Utopian culture. Believe it or not, the Cliffs Notes had the most original and best thought out analysis that I read, AND BELIEVE ME I read a lot on Utopian Literature. If you are reading Utopia, I suggest the Cliffs Notes.

Thomas More's Magician: A Novel Account of Utopia in Mexico (Phoenix Paperback Series)

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Thomas More's Magician: A Novel Account of Utopia in Mexico (Phoenix Paperback Series)
Toby Green
Manufacturer: Orion Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0753819783

Book Description

In 1532, eleven years after the Spanish conquest, Mexico is in crisis. As the conquistadors discover an earthly paradise, its peoples and their Gods are being destroyed. This is a time of greed, uncertainty—and idealism. Despairing of his surroundings, Vasco de Quiroga, a new member of the Spanish ruling council, forges a commune on Mexico City's outskirts, using Thomas More's book, Utopia, as his blueprint. As Toby Green explores Quiroga’s story, he begins to sense an eerie resonance between Quiroga’s age and our own. With vivid reconstructions of 16th-century Spain and Mexico, the narrative becomes an account not only of Quiroga, but also of Utopia as both an idea and a literary form.

The Road to Utopia: How Kinky, Tony, and I Saved More Animals than Noah

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The Road to Utopia: How Kinky, Tony, and I Saved More Animals than Noah
Nancy Parker-Simons
Manufacturer: University of Texas Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0292714882

Book Description

Noah had it easy. On any given day at the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch in Medina, Texas, Nancy Parker-Simons, her husband Tony Simons, and a willing crew of employees and volunteers care for at least sixty rescued dogs, not to mention numerous cats, chickens, pigs, horses, wild mustangs, donkeys, and a rooster named Alfred Hitchcock—and Kinky Friedman, the rescue ranch's "Gandhi-like figure" who brings Nancy and Tony stray and abused animals, raises money for the rescue ranch, and makes sure no one leaves the ranch without a dog or two.

In this entertaining book, Nancy Parker-Simons tells the heartwarming, often hilarious story of the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch. She describes how a series of "it must have been fate" incidents brought her together with Tony Simons and Kinky Friedman, and how, in 1998, the three of them decided to create a no-kill haven for homeless and abused animals in the Texas Hill Country. Since their first rescue—the "magnificent seven" which were, in fact, forty-one dogs liberated from local animal shelters—"Cousin Nancy" and her crew have rescued over one thousand animals.

Parker-Simons tells the fascinating stories of several dozen fortunate dogs, cats, and other animals that have come to the rescue ranch, either to be adopted by new owners or to live out their days in the ranch's "utopia." She also pays tribute to the many supporters who have helped keep the ark afloat, including First Lady Laura Bush, Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Dwight Yoakam, Robert Earl Keen, Molly Ivins, and Don Imus. Everyone who cares about animal welfare will find The Road to Utopia hard to resist.

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