Books

Average customer rating:

The Utopian canon from classical to contemporary times

The Utopia Reader

Manufacturer: New York University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Anthologies | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books

Look Inside History Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Nonfiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Reference Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Imaginary Communities: Utopia, the Nation, and the Spatial Histories of Modernity
Visions of Utopia (New York Public Library Lectures in Humanities)
Three Early Modern Utopias: Thomas More: Utopia / Francis Bacon: New Atlantis / Henry Neville: The Isle of Pines (Oxford World's Classics)
Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age
Utopian Communities in America, 1680-1880

ASIN: 0814715710
Release Date: 1999-11-01

Customer Reviews:

The Utopian canon from classical to contemporary times.......2003-11-08

When I was told to put together a class on "Utopian Images: Fact and Fiction" I took an inventory of my personal library and began ordering books to fill the gaps. My primary goal was to order some of the less familiar utopian and dystopian novels that I did not already have, such as Francis Bacon's "New Atlantis," Samuel Butler's "Erewhon," Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "Herland," Ygeni Zamiatin's "We," Katherine Burdekin's "Swastika Night," and even B. F. Skinner's "Walden Two." But I also ordered some theoretical and critical works on utopians, both literary and real world, and one of the first books I ordered was "The Utopia Reader," edited by Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower Sargent. What immediately caught my attention was that in these books there are excerpts from every single one of the aforementioned books, along with the proverbial much, much more.

This reader provides extensive selections from the major utopian texts (Thomas More's "Utopia," Edward Bellamy' "Looking Backward: 2000-1887," Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World"), along with samplings from dozens of others, stretching from Hesiod's "Works and Days" to George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four." The goal is to provide an overview of the history of utopianisms through both well known selections and more obscure but usually fascinating texts. After a brief Introduction, which defines the key terms and the scope of the survey, there are six additional sections:

(2) Utopianism before Thomas More covers about two-dozens sources from ancient times to the 15th century. In stories about the Golden Age or various earthly paradises we find the roots of utopianism, as well as in Plato's "Republic," the legend of the Land of Prester John, and the monastic Rules of St. Benedict; (3) The Sixteenth Century provides a lengthy excerpt from More's "Utopia," supplemented by excerpts from Rabelais and Montaigne; (4) The Seventeenth Century focuses on the scientific utopias of Tommaso Campanella and Francis Bacon, as well as the more politically oriented works of Margaret Cavendish and James Harrington, with Shakespeare's "The Tempest" thrown into the mix.

(5) The Eighteenth Century begins with Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" and looks at some lesser works from the period, most notably Timothy Dwight's "Greenfield Hill" and Thomas Spence's "The Constitution of Spensonia, which reflected the period of political revolution that would change the map of Europe and North America; (6) The Nineteenth Century is the most atypical section of the book because it begins with the historical examples of such American communal utopias as the Shakers, the Amana community, and Oneida, before turning to the works of Butler, Bellamy, and others, including Marx and Engels. The fact that there were actually communities other there in the real world trying to build real world utopias is an important part of the evolution of utopianism; and (7) The Twentieth Century covers the works that are probably the best known utopian works, from Gilman, Zamiatin, and Burdekin to Huxley, Skinner, and Orwell.

The cumulative result is a solid introduction to the canon of utopian works, from classical to contemporary times, which is done through choice selections and excerpts instead of summaries. The commentary provided by the editors is more in the form of introductions, providing some historical and biographical background on the work and author, instead of constituting any sort of formal analysis. But then the title proclaims this volume to a reader, and it more than adquately fulfills that ideal.

If there is a limitation in this collection it would be that for the most part it ignores utopianism in the realm of science fiction, even in terms of crossover dystopians like Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451," Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale," and Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Dispossessed." But it is certainly understandable that Claeys and Sarent are not interested in having to draw the line once they start talking about works in that field. With that caveat the only significant work missing for my money would be Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange" (but I am planning on using the film version anyway). But the bottom line remains that there is nothing comparable out there today that can provide you as solid introduction to the utopian tradition as this reader.

Average customer rating:

The most scintillating thinker of our time.
Marxism for this 'postmodern' time.

The Jameson Reader (Blackwell Readers)
Kathi Weeks
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Essays | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Cognitive Psychology | Behavioral Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Science Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change
Literary Theory: A Practical Introduction
Resources of Critique
The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic
Archaeologies of the Future (Poetics of Social Forms)

ASIN: 0631202706

Customer Reviews:

The most scintillating thinker of our time........2003-12-30

Fredric Jameson (b. 1934) is one of the most influential and original thinkers of our time. He first began to publish important work in the 1960s. After earning a Ph.D. in French literature at Yale in 1959, Jameson revised his dissertation and published it as "Sartre: The Origins of a Style," a book which is still one of the finest examinations of its subject.

Throughout the Sixties, Jameson read deeply in Marxist literature, from Mehring and Plekhanov to Adorno, Lukacs, and Sartre, and his extensive research and immersion in Marxism resulted in 1971's seminal "Marxism and Form," a landmark in Marxist criticism and an unsurpassed dialectical survey of the 20th century's most important communist writings. With this book, Jameson established himself as the foremost Marxist critic of his time, rivalled only by Terry Eagleton, whose approaches to criticism and the dialectic are highly disparate from Jameson's.

Jameson's interests and expertise are catholic, and his prose style, so often referred to as "difficult" or "impenetrable," has always struck me with its elegance, precision, and singularity. No one else writes sentences like him, and no other critic's prose offers as much sheer aesthetic pleasure. In his criticism, Jameson's allusions and insights are always profound and original. His powers of associative and lateral thinking are unique. Whatever his subject, from critiquing a Balzac novel to limning "The Godfather," Jameson's approach is resolutely Marxist and his dialectic fluid and densely erudite.

"The Jameson Reader" offers readers an excellent introduction to the world of Jameson's thought, with essays ranging from the state of Marxist criticism in modern academe to "narrative as a socially symbolic act." His groundbreaking examinations of postmodernism are included as well. The introduction and commentary by the editors are superb throughout.

Anyone seeking familiarity with the work of Fredric Jameson should start with "The Jameson Reader." No one looks at our modern world with a more penetrating gaze, and if any modern critic's work will last, it is his.

Marxism for this 'postmodern' time........2001-05-22

Hardt and Weeks have compiled an excellent overview of Jameson's impressive volume of work. The excerpts from Jameson will prove thought-provoking to any student or activist who wants to maintain the critical praxis of Marxism, but wants to move away from its historic economic focus. Consequently, by expanding Marx's concept of the mode of production, and through insightful analyses of history, art, film, music, and architecture Jameson provides an insight into the value of Marxism for what Wendy Brown (and others) have called these postmodern times.

Utopian Audiences: How Readers Locate Nowhere (Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book)

Average customer rating:

Utopian Audiences: How Readers Locate Nowhere (Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book)
Kenneth M. Roemer
Manufacturer: University of Massachusetts Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Book Description

How do readers transform Utopia? How do they manipulate imaginary worlds to gain new perceptions of their own worlds, perceptions that help them build desires to change reality into a somewhere resembling the author's nowhere? How do authors engage readers in this process? How do cultures, historical forces, and literary conventions create spaces enabling authors to invite and readers to engage? These are questions addressed in Utopian Audiences, the first study to employ a wide spectrum of reader-response approaches to define the nature and impact of utopian literature.

In the first part of the book, Kenneth M. Roemer establishes why utopian literature offers an attractive arena for reader-response criticism. He focuses on the literature's diversity, its provocative and multi-genre character, and the availability of documented responses as different as book illustrations and intentional communities. In the second part, he concentrates on late nineteenth-century America, which witnessed a grand outpouring of utopian literature, and in particular on Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward," the most popular and influential American utopian novel.

The study progresses from broad cultural constructs to specific modern responses; from the perceptual systems and reading conventions allowing readers to "see" utopias to text-based models of implied readers and to documented readings of actual people, including Bellamy himself, reviewers, and 733 late twentieth-century readers. A fictional gathering of all the readers concludes the book.

Average customer rating:

Wir Sind Utopia
Andres
Manufacturer: Suhrkamp Verlag
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Average customer rating:

Plato's Republic for Readers
George A. Blair
Manufacturer: University Press of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Greek & Roman | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Political | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0761810447

Book Description

Blair's new translation of Plato's "Republic" is more readable and accessible than any translation on the market. Blair makes a persuasive case for using "honesty" rather than "morality" when translating a key Greek term. In this sense, the book is a radical departure from much of Plato scholarship. The author argues that the book is first and foremost an ethical treatise investigating the question of whether honesty is the best policy or not, and only secondarily a political treatise. Includes an introduction to the translation and an overview of the book to guide readers new to Plato.

Gender & Utopia in Advertising: A Critical Reader

Average customer rating:

Table of Contents

Gender & Utopia in Advertising: A Critical Reader

Manufacturer: Syracuse University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Advertising | Marketing & Sales | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Customer Reviews:

Table of Contents.......1998-09-04

Introduction / Luigi and Alessandra Manca -- Body of evidence: studying women and advertising / Margaret Duffy -- The four women of the Apocalypse: polarized feminine images in magazine advertisements / Marian MacCurdy -- Scent and femininity: strategies of contemporary perfume ads / Veleda J. Boyd, Marilyn M. Robitaille -- Fashion magazine advertising: constructing femininity in the postfeminist era / Shelley Budgeon -- Sexier and more sensitive: the changing advertising image of males in the 1990s / Sammy R. Dana -- Sex and the selling of male fragrances / Rita C. Hubbard -- The mirror and the window on the man of the Nineties: portrayals of males in television advertising / Peter Seely -- Adam through the looking glass: images of men in magazine advertisements of the 1980s / Luigi and Alessandra Manca -- Made to order: backlash in the catalogues / Melissa E. Barth -- Selling the good old days: images of rural utopia in contemporary American advertising / Jonathan F. Lewis and Paul Catterson.

Present Imperfect : Fiction: Topics and Types

Average customer rating:

Present Imperfect : Fiction: Topics and Types
McGraw-Hill
Manufacturer: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Classics | Literature & Fiction | Teens | Subjects | Books

Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Teens | Subjects | Books

Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Teens | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0844205141

The Utopia Reader.(Review) (book review): An article from: Utopian Studies

Average customer rating:

The Utopia Reader.(Review) (book review): An article from: Utopian Studies
Michael Jackson
Manufacturer: Society for Utopian Studies
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Utopian Studies, published by Society for Utopian Studies on January 1, 2000. The length of the article is 1901 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Utopia Reader.(Review) (book review)
Author: Michael Jackson
Publication: Utopian Studies (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 2000
Publisher: Society for Utopian Studies
Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Page: 120

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Average customer rating:

Doran's modern readers' bookshelf
Lewis Mumford
Manufacturer: Boni and Liveright
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

The Condition of Man (Harvest Book, Hb 251)
The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects
Pentagon Of Power: The Myth Of The Machine, Vol. II
The Culture of Cities
Myth of the Machine : Technics and Human Development

ASIN: B000856WOA

Book Description

1922. Utopia has long been another name for the unreal and the impossible. We have set utopia over against the world. As a matter of fact, it is our utopias that make the world tolerable to us: the cities and mansions that make people dream of are those in which they finally live. The more that men react upon their environment and make it over after a human pattern, the more continuously do they live in utopia; but when there is a breach between the world of affairs and the over world of utopia, we become conscious of the part that the will-to-utopia has played in our lives and we see our utopia as a separate reality.

Present Imperfect: Imagining Utopia (Fiction--Topics and Types)

Average customer rating:

Present Imperfect: Imagining Utopia (Fiction--Topics and Types)
J.Suzanne Ravise
Manufacturer: Natl Textbook Co Trade
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Education | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

High School | Education | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Study & Teaching | Words & Language | Reference | Subjects | Books

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books

Books:

Books