Lyman Tower Sargent

There are many debates about utopia - What constitutes a utopia? Are utopias benign or dangerous? Is the idea of utopianism essential to Christianity or heretical? What is the relationship between utopia and ideology? This Very Short Introduction explores these issues and examines utopianism and its history. Lyman Sargent discusses the role of utopianism in literature, and in the development of colonies and in immigration. The idea of utopia has become...

"The Utopia Reader compiles primary texts from a variety of authors and movements across history that have explored how to envision different ways of life, and why we do so. The volume includes texts ranging from classical Greek literature, the Old Testament, and Plato's Republic, to Sir Thomas More's Utopia, to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and beyond. By balancing well-known and obscure examples, this volume provides a comprehensive and definitive...

Extremism takes many forms: racial, political, religious, economic.This collection of extremist idealogies and writings highlights the one thread that unites the various brands of extremism, namely, that there is always an enemy. The enemy can take the form of the government, communism, the patriarchy, African Americans, gays and lesbians, men, welfare recipients, Jews, or corporation, but the presence of a clear-cut idealogical foe is an intrinsic...