Eminent cultural critic Lewis Mumford's first book, The Story of Utopias, is a fascinating survey of the development of the concept of "utopia." Mumford examines the major utopias-discussing Plato's Republic and Thomas More's Utopia, among others-concluding with a look at the prospects for utopia as it relates to the realities of urban planning.

In 2005, J.C. Hallman came across a scientific paper about "Pleistocene Rewilding," a peculiar idea from conservation biology that suggested repopulating bereft ecosystems with endangered "megafauna." The plan sounded utterly utopian, but Hallman liked the idea as much as the scientists did-perhaps because he had grown up on a street called Utopia Road in a master-planned community in Southern California. Pleistocene Rewilding rekindled in him a longstanding...

"Examining utopian writings and other texts that focus on ideal societies, from Greek antiquity to the present, this book offers a fresh take on utopian thought. Mao begins with the observation that utopian ideas often are propelled by an angry conviction that society is badly arranged. In an introduction and three long chapters, he argues that utopia's most basic aim has not been to secure happiness, material welfare, or even order, but instead to...

Levin explores the philosophical basis of America's foundations and the crisis that the government faces today.

"Told in a series of essays that balance memoir with fieldwork, [this book] is an idiosyncratic study of American utopian experiments--from the Shakers to the radical faerie communes of Short Mountain to the Bronx rebuilding movement--through the lens of one woman's quest to create a more communal life in a time of unending economic and social precarity."--Dust jacket flap.

Erewhon Revisited Twenty Years Later, Both by the Original Discoverer of the Country and by His Son (1901) is a satirical novel by Samuel Butler, forming a belated sequel to his Erewhon (1872). The Cambridge History of English and American Literature judges that it "has less of the free imaginative play of its predecessor…but, in sharp brilliance of wit and criticism, in intellectual unity and coherence, it surpasses Erewhon"

Published in 1872, this scathingly satirical utopian novel follows the exploits of a young traveler who finds himself in a strange and remote country where bizarre customs are the rule. Based on Butler's experiences in New Zealand, and influenced by his reading of Darwin, Erewhon is also notable for its early depiction of machine intelligence.

This fictional outline of a modern utopia has been a center of controversy ever since its publication in 1948. Set in the United States, it pictures a society in which human problems are solved by a scientific technology of human conduct. It is now widely recognized that great changes must be made in the American way of life. Not only can we not face the rest of the world while consuming and polluting as we do, we cannot for long face ourselves while...

"Wicker Man meets Final Destination in Jennifer Thorne's atmospheric, unsettling folk horror novel about love, duty, and community. On the idyllic island of Lute, every seventh summer, seven people die. No more, no less. Lute and its inhabitants are blessed, year after year, with good weather, good health, and good fortune. They live a happy, superior life, untouched by the war that rages all around them. So it's only fair that every seven years,...

Utopian anarchists are pitted against rogue demon deer in this dropkick-in-the-mouth punk fantasy that Alan Moore calls "scary and energetic."
Searching for clues about her best friend's mysterious suicide, Danielle ventures to the squatter, utopian town of Freedom, Iowa, and witnesses a protector spirit—in the form of a blood-red, three-antlered deer—begin to turn on its summoners. She and her new friends have to act fast if they're...