Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea

Posted on 06 March 2018 by Erik Reece

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, 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. Best Read eBook Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea Author Erik Reece – kino-fada.fr I ve always been completely fascinated with utopias, and I ve secretly longed to join one or start one I m a natural reader for this little travel narrative then, as the author takes us on a road trip a small one through all the utopias and former utopias that are or were located close to his home Like the stories of people who have moved and started over, stories of utopias tend to all end the same in failure and I d love to come up with some sort of broad and clever reason why I suppo I ve always been completely fascinated with utopias, and I ve secretly longed to join one or start one I m a natural reader for this little travel narrative then, as the author takes us on a road trip a small one through all the utopias and former utopias that are or were located close to his home Like the stories of people who have moved and started over, stories of utopias tend to all end the same in failure and I d l...Loved this road trip review about American s utopian communities If you don t have the time to read the entire book make sure you DO make time to read the last chapter, titled What If In fact you shou... Utopia Drive reads like a podcast I d love to listen to The conceit is fairly basic, where a writer is visiting a series of historically Utopian villages and communes in the United States over a period of time, giving a bit of history as well as present day affairs in many cases, and providing those findings...The grim state of our nation daimon break the trance yarrow, tansy, wormwood and lavender the atheneum revelations 12 6 there s nothing like a dream to create the future a peaceable revolution exponential growth war machine economists what I have i...I love the premise of this book, a road trip in search of utopian communities in the US The book starts in Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, famous home of a Shaker community that produced simple yet beautiful furniture and buildings Another stop was Robert Owen s New Harmony, Indiana, home of mutual cooperation Next is Utopia, Ohio, founded by Josiah Warren who earlier opened a cooperative store in Cincinnati which became known as the time store, where customers could purchase goods in exchange for t I love the premise of this book, a road trip in search of utopian communities in the US The book starts in Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, famous home of a Shaker community that produced simple yet beautiful furniture and buildings Another stop w...Doesn t live up to the hype My sense in reading this facile histoy of messianic groups in 19th century America trying to build heaven on earth was that the author wanted to write off the cost of a road trip vacation as a tax dedication against a book advance There is an anecdote of an encounter between the author with a 20 something year old resident which to my mind sums up this book This anacdote takes place at a modern day commune where the author stays for a few days for the experience of Doesn t live up to the hype My sense in reading this facile histoy of messianic groups in 19th century America trying to build heaven on earth was that the author wanted to write off the cost of a road trip va...An important book to read about past attempts to form utopian communities early in America s history Some of those utopias even still exist today I only wish that the book included pictures of the communities or their founders, and that the book included chapters on Brook Farm and the Amish Instead, the author chose to include...Listened to 11 out of 13 hours of the audiobook, and tired of it Author is so annoying I finally got sick of all of the flowery prose.The last couple of hours I listened, I could only think of the section of The Milagro Beanfield War when one of Bloom s articles with amateur psychology is quoted, to be followed up with Onofre Martinez s imagined reaction to it You re just farting words Indeed, Reece, in this book, is largely just farting words I could go on, but brevity is the soul of w Listened to 11 out of 13 hours of the audiobook, and tired of it Author is so annoying I finally got sick of all of the flowery prose.The last couple of hours I listened, I could only think of the section...This was muchthan a road trip novel I feel like Reece spent most of his time giving the very interesting history of different attempts of creating utopias in the eastern U.S Besides just being an interesting topic, I felt like it also served as a genealogy o...Fascinating A road trip through past and present utopias from Kentucky to New York highlighting that we still need Utopian thinking for another way forward The last chapter What If offers current, compelling examples of models that solve the problems of income inequality.

Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea

06 March 2018

Erik Reece