Utopia Against the Family

Utopia Against the Family PDF Author: Bryce J. Christensen
Publisher: MAA Press
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Is the traditional family an anachronism? That's the question Christensen answers in this thought-provoking book. His analysis examines why government expansion often comes at the expense of family values.

Utopia Against the Family

Utopia Against the Family PDF Author: Bryce J. Christensen
Publisher: MAA Press
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Is the traditional family an anachronism? That's the question Christensen answers in this thought-provoking book. His analysis examines why government expansion often comes at the expense of family values.

Fruitlands

Fruitlands PDF Author: Richard Francis
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300169442
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
This is a definitive account of Fruitlands, one of history's most unsuccessful, but most significant, utopian experiments. It was established in Massachusetts in 1843 by Bronson Alcott (whose ten year old daughter Louisa May, future author of Little Women, was among the members) and an Englishman called Charles Lane, under the watchful gaze of Emerson, Thoreau, and other New England intellectuals. Alcott and Lane developed their own version of the doctrine known as Transcendentalism, hoping to transform society and redeem the environment through a strict regime of veganism and celibacy. But physical suffering and emotional conflict, particularly between Lane and Alcott's wife, Abigail, made the community unsustainable. Drawing on the letters and diaries of those involved, the author explores the relationship between the complex philosophical beliefs held by Alcott, Lane, and their fellow idealists and their day to day lives. The result is a vivid and often very funny narrative of their travails, demonstrating the dilemmas and conflicts inherent to any utopian experiment and shedding light on a fascinating period of American history.

Letters from an American Utopia

Letters from an American Utopia PDF Author: Christopher Clark
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781945473333
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
In 1842, a group of radical abolitionists and social reformers established the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, a utopian community in western Massachusetts organized around a collectively owned and operated silk mill. Members sought to challenge the prevailing social attitudes of their day by creating a society in which "the rights of all are equal without distinction of sex, color or condition, sect or religion." This volume brings together a remarkable set of seventy-five letters written by the members of the Stetson family, who belonged to the Association for almost four years. Discovered recently by a family descendant, the correspondence documents the thoughts and experiences of ordinary people struggling to uphold common ideals in challenging circumstances. The letters re-create an extended family conversation in which news was shared, stories were told, hopes and fears expressed, and ideas discussed. We meet James Stetson, an ambivalent family patriarch with a wry sense of humor. There is Almira, his eldest child, who strove earnestly to work for her family and wrote movingly of her dreams of a career in service to her principles. And there is Dolly Witter Stetson, James's wife and the central figure in this collection, whom we first meet as she was about to give birth for the ninth time and whose relish for community life was shaped by a lively intelligence, a commitment to exploring reform ideals, and a down-to-earth view of family duties and household burdens.

Utopia Drive

Utopia Drive PDF Author: Erik Reece
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374710759
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
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. " ... an engaging exploration -- and example -- of the fruitful tunnel-visions of dreamers turned doers." - Publishers Weekly

Utopia

Utopia PDF Author: Thomas More
Publisher: e-artnow
ISBN: 8027303583
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 105

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Book Description
Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.

Women, Family, and Utopia

Women, Family, and Utopia PDF Author: Lawrence Foster
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815625346
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Why would thousands of Americans before the Civil War have joined new religious movements that rejected conventional monogamous marriage in favor of alternative life-styles? The Shakers created a celibate system that gave women full equality with men in religious leadership. The Oneida Perfectionists set up a form of group marriage, or "free love," that radically changed relations between the sexes. And the Mormons eventually introduced a form of polygamy based on Old Testament models. Lawrence Foster provides the most comprehensive analysis yet written of how and why women's roles were restructured in these three groups and the reasons for the initial success and eventual failure of these efforts to introduce alternatives to monogamous marriage. Foster argues that although none of these groups was explicitly "feminist" in its approach, all of them struggled to reshape and revitalize relations between the sexes in their communal experiments. He offers a coherent, overall perspective, making this an important book for all readers interested in American social history, religious studies, sociology, communalism, and women's studies.

Chasing Utopia

Chasing Utopia PDF Author: Nikki Giovanni
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062308130
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
From one of America’s most celebrated poets, Nikki Giovanni, comes this poignant collection of poetry that celebrates the simple pleasures of everyday life and the bonds we share with those closest to us. “This slim volume delights on every page. There are stories, imaginings, whimsy, and startling images which prove the poet’s power and her command of language . . . Anyone with a love of language will be delighted with this book and the continuing publication of America’s treasured poet.”—San Francisco Book Review The poetry of Nikki Giovanni has spurred movements and inspired songs, turned hearts and informed generations. She's been hailed as a healer and as a national treasure. But Giovanni's heart resides in the everyday, where family and lovers gather, friends commune, and those no longer with us are remembered. And at every gathering there is food—food as sustenance, food as aphrodisiac, food as memory. A pot of beans is flavored with her mother's sighs—this sigh part cardamom, that one the essence of clove; a lover requests a banquet as an affirmation of ongoing passion; homage is paid to the most time-honored appetizer: soup. With Chasing Utopia, Giovanni demands that the prosaic—flowers, birdsong, winter—be seen as poetic, and reaffirms once again why she is as energetic, "remarkable" (Gwendolyn Brooks), "wonderful" (Marian Wright Edelman),"outspoken, prolific, energetic" (New York Times), and relevant as ever.

Perfect Little World

Perfect Little World PDF Author: Kevin Wilson
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062450352
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Wilson’s ambition alone is exciting. . . . [His] writing has a Houdini-like perfection, wherein no matter how grim the variables, each lovely sentence manages to escape with all its parts intact.” —Boston Globe The eagerly-anticipated follow-up to the New York Times bestseller The Family Fang—a warm-hearted and moving story about a young woman making a family on her own terms. When Isabelle Poole meets Dr. Preston Grind, she’s fresh out of high school, pregnant with her art teacher's baby, and totally on her own. Izzy knows she can be a good mother but without any money or relatives to help, she’s left searching. Dr. Grind, an awkwardly charming child psychologist, has spent his life studying family, even after tragedy struck his own. Now, with the help of an eccentric billionaire, he has the chance to create a “perfect little world”—to study what would happen when ten children are raised collectively, without knowing who their biological parents are. He calls it The Infinite Family Project and he wants Izzy and her son to join. This attempt at a utopian ideal starts off promising, but soon the gentle equilibrium among the families disintegrates: unspoken resentments between the couples begin to fester; the project's funding becomes tenuous; and Izzy’s growing feelings for Dr. Grind make her question her participation in this strange experiment in the first place. Written with the same compassion and charm that won over legions of readers with The Family Fang, Kevin Wilson shows us with grace and humor that the best families are the ones we make for ourselves.

The Utopia Experiment

The Utopia Experiment PDF Author: Dylan Evans
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 1743536380
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
In 2006, Dylan Evans set out to answer these questions. He left his job in a high-tech robotics lab, moved to the Scottish Highlands and founded a community called The Utopia Experiment. There, together with an eclectic assortment of volunteers, he tried to live out a scenario of global collapse, free from modern technology and comforts. Within a year, Evans found himself detained in a psychiatric hospital, shattered and depressed, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. In The Utopia Experiment he tells his own extraordinary story: his frenzied early enthusiasm for this unusual project, the many challenges of post-apocalyptic living, his descent into madness and his gradual recovery. In the process, he learns some hard lessons about himself and about life, and comes to see the modern world he abandoned in a new light.

The War Against the Family

The War Against the Family PDF Author: William D. Gairdner
Publisher: BPS Books
ISBN: 0978440218
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 671

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Book Description
Inspired by his own passionate experience as a son, husband, and father, Gairdner offers in this book a forum for a long-overdue debate about the future of the family in Western civilization.