Main entry:

Reece, Erik, author.

Title & Author:

Utopia drive : a road trip through America's most radical idea / Erik Reece.

Edition:

First edition.

Publication:

New York, NY : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.

Description:

x, 346 pages ; 22 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 343-346).
Nonesuch (Woodford County, Kentucky) -- The new creation (Pleasant Hill, Kentucky) -- Monk's Pond (Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani Monastery: Bardstown, Kentucky) -- A beautiful failure (New Harmony, Indiana) -- A simple act of moral commerce (Cincinnati and Utopia, Ohio) -- How should people live? (Twin Oaks: Louisa, Virginia) -- A clearinghouse for dreams (Utopia Parkway: Queens, New York) -- The Pine Barrens anarchists (Modern Times: Long Island, New York) -- Hunger not to have but to be (Walden Pond: Concord, Massachusetts) -- Some heartbreak, much happiness (Oneida, New York) -- What if? (Niagara Falls, Canada).

Summary:

"For Erik Reece, life, at last, was good: he was newly married, gainfully employed, living in a creekside cabin in his beloved Kentucky woods. It sounded, as he describes it, "like a country song with a happy ending." And yet he was still haunted by a sense that the world--or, more specifically, his country--could be better. He couldn't ignore his conviction that, in fact, the good ol' USA was in the midst of great social, environmental, and political crises--that for the first time in our history, we were being swept into a future that had no future. Where did we--here, in the land of Jeffersonian optimism and better tomorrows--go wrong? Rather than despair, Reece turned to those who had dared to imagine radically different futures for America. What followed was a giant road trip and research adventure through the sites of America's utopian communities, both historical and contemporary, known and unknown, successful and catastrophic. What he uncovered was not just a series of lost histories and broken visionaries but also a continuing and vital but hidden idealistic tradition in American intellectual history. Utopia Drive is an important and definitive reconstruction of that tradition. It is also, perhaps, a new framework to help us find a genuinely sustainable way forward."-- Provided by publisher.
"Eric Reece, author of Lost Mountain and An American Gospel, traces the history of the utopian movement in America and lays out a radical re-visioning of the future of utopian societies"-- Provided by publisher.

ISBN:

9780374106577 (hardback)
0374106576 (hardback)
(e-book)
9780374710750
0374710759

Subject:

Utopian socialism United States History.
Utopias United States History.
Communitarianism United States History.
Socialisme utopique États-Unis Histoire.
Utopies États-Unis Histoire.
Communautarisme États-Unis Histoire.
HISTORY United States General.
HISTORY United States 19th Century.
Communitarianism.
Utopian socialism.
Utopias.
United States.
HISTORY / United States / General^HISTORY / United States / 19th Century.
HISTORY / United States / General.
HISTORY / United States / 19th Century.

Form/genre:

Travel writing.
History.
Récits de voyages.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 294810
Call No.: BIB 240677
Status: Available