The Story of Utopias : txt
Mumford, Lewis.
- 213 p. ill. ; 20 cm. book
- Compass books, C112 .
Introduction by Hendrik Willem van Loon, Ph.D. iv -- Chapter One: How the will to utopia causes them to live I two worlds, and how, therefore, we re read the Story of utopia the other half of the Story of Mankind 1 -- Chapter Two How the Greeks lived in a New World, and utopia seemed just around the corner. How Plato in the Republic is chiefly concerned with what will hold the ideal city together 13 -- Chapter Three How something happened to utopia between Plato and Sir Thomas More; and how utopia was discovered again, along with the New World 34 -- Chapter Four How the new Humanism of the Renaissance brings is within sight of Christianpolis ; and how we have for the first time a glimpse of a modern utopia 50 -- Chapter Five How Bacon and Campanella, who have a great reputation as utopians, are little better than echoes of the men who went before them 65 -- Chapter Six How something happened in the eighteenth century which made men furiously to think, and how a whole group of utopias sprang out of the upturned soil of industrialism 70 -- Chapter Seven How some utopians have thought that a good community rested at bottom on the right division and use of lands; and what sort of communities these land animals projected 83 -- Chapter Eight How Etienne Cabet dreamed of a new Napoleon called Icar, and a new France called Icaria; and how this utopia, with that which Edward Bellamy shows us looking Backward, gives us a hint of what machinery might bring us to if the industrial organization were nationalized 95 -- Chapter Nine How William Morris and W.H. Hudson renew the classic tradition of utopias; and hos, finally, Mr. H.G. Wells sums up and clarifies the utopias of the past, and brings then into contact with the world of the present 110 -- Chapter Ten How the Country Hose and Coketown became the utopias of the modern age ; and how they made the world over their image 123 -- Chapter Eleven How we reckon up accounts with the one sided utopias of the partisans 155 -- Chapter Twelve How the half worlds must go, and how eutopia may come ; and what we need before we can build Jerusalem in any green and pleasant land 176 -- Bibliography 208 --
The Story of Utopias is Lewis Mumford's first book and is an engaging exploration of the development of the concept of Utopia, by one of the foremost historian and social theorists of the 20th century. Mumford begins with a survey of the major utopias, some well-known, others less so. His survey takes a look at Plato's Republic, More's Utopia, Andreæ's Christanopolis, Bacon's New Atlantis, Campanella's City of the Sun, Fourier's Phalanxes, Cabet's Icaria, Bellamy's Looking Backward, Morris' News from Nowhere, and finally H.G. Wells' utopian fiction. In the final portion of the book Mumford explores the prospects for Utopia and relates it to the realities of urban planning. The Story of Utopias is a great introduction to this fascinating subject --