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Utopia

Utopia

List Price: $1.50
Your Price: $1.50
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Comparing editions
Review: The Yale edition (Miller's translation - $6.95) gives a bare list of events in More life, but the short introduction mostly focuses on the syntax and rhetoric of the book; there's very little in it about the social and historical background. It omits the commendatory letters from various humanists, but includes both the opening letter to Giles from More, and the postscript letter to Giles from the 1517 edition (but not the Busleyden letter about Utopia as a real place that prompted it). (It also has the 1518 woodcut map of Utopia.) The sidenotes that Miller thinks are not mere section markers are placed in the footnotes.

The Hackett edition (Wooton's translation - also $6.95) has a pointed persuasively argued introduction focusing on the translator's own interpretation of the work; he relates it to More's life and the paradoxical double vision of Christian piety and ordinary social life also found in More's friend Erasmus's "The Sileni of Alicbiades," which is included. This edition puts the sidenotes in the margins, and also includes all the introductory and appended material by others, the 1516 map, the Utopian alphabet and the garden woodcut, and black and white illustrations of portraits of More, Erasmus and Gilles.

I haven't seen the other options.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Just another Classic you need to read
Review: There is a lot of discussion about this book, as there should be. What did More intend when he wrote it, is it a satire or a vision of the perfect society, all are questions people try to ask in their reviews of this volume. Having read this book twice, both times for college courses, I can tell you that the Dover Thrift edition is wonderful, the book is wonderful, the price it right, and you need to read this book. Afterwards, I encourage you to join the debate, something all books strive to do, and greats ones excel at.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Just another Classic you need to read
Review: There is a lot of discussion about this book, as there should be. What did More intend when he wrote it, is it a satire or a vision of the perfect society, all are questions people try to ask in their reviews of this volume. Having read this book twice, both times for college courses, I can tell you that the Dover Thrift edition is wonderful, the book is wonderful, the price it right, and you need to read this book. Afterwards, I encourage you to join the debate, something all books strive to do, and greats ones excel at.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: it's horrid!
Review: this book brought shame to me.who cares about the perfect society, its not like its actually going to happen. this book is for dreamers. sorry more, sorry that i'm not as crazy and can notice the things that are actually going on around me.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: very eye opening
Review: this book has lots of big words that me no understand and no pretty pictures for me to looky at. bob thinks this is a good story and mes agreeee.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Eye-opening
Review: This book is foundational. I mean that in every sense of the word. This book has been applied in so many ways to so many organizations, so many lives, so many countries, and even religions. To read this book is to look through the eyes of hundreds upon hundreds of historical figures that have existed since it was written in 1516.

I think it's safe to say that everyone, at some point in their lives, has sat down and thought about "Utopia." I know I did. You think, "Well, if everyone worked equal amounts and everyone shared equal amounts, there would be plenty of things for everyone, and everyone would be happy." This book takes that idea and stretches it to it's greatest extremes, incorporating politics, military strategies, religions, lifestyles... Everything that makes up a country. It really sounds like it could work... Except for the fact that humans are human.

And More goes into that. With every new idea he proposes, he is already responding to your counter-statements by explaining how the people in Utopia act a certain way, believe a certain way, or he'll take another key element of the Utopian system and use that in his defense as well. He knows that humans are flawed in many ways, but Utopia is all about perfection... And so therefore the Utopians are perfect. In the book he says, "They never find fault about other ways of life, or boast about their own." (122). Only in Utopia.

However, don't get the idea that the Utopian system is truly perfect, because it has its own contradictions. Reading through the book, I found at least 4 contradictions of itself, but I think More did this on purpose. He knows this place can never exist, and it seems like he threw a few loopholes in there to remind the reader of that.

Another thing that is really enlightening about this book is the first half of it, and how it ties in to modern American life. To me, it is clearly obvious that America was partly based on it. I've talked to people that don't feel similarly, but if you read through it and think about how much it parallels modern life in America, it really stands out. I still believe that the Founding Forefathers of America all had copies of this book at their sides while deciding how this new country should be run. Read it and you'll understand.

Another great thing about reading this book is the insane amount of great quotes there are. More has a wonderful talent of saying what's obvious about the world, but saying it in a way that's terrifically accurate and concise... Making you think, "Man, that's EXACTLY how it is! If people only knew..." I have something on every other page highlighted in my copy of this book. Literally. Sometimes more frequent than that.

Overall, I give this book the highest reccommendation possible. Read it with an open mind, a highlighter in hand, and a place to jot down notes nearby. Once you start reading, you have a flood of epiphanies coming to you, and it's nice to be able to look back on them and think you're smart :). Prepare to be enlightened, because this is one of the best eye-openers you could possibly find.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: what a book
Review: This book is interesting because it's so annoying -- the way More puts so much of his own opinions and ideals into this fictional society -- it's like he's designing the sort of society he himself would like to live in -- but my own society suddenly became like utopia I would be miserable and it wouldn't be long before they'd be dumping my body unceremoniously into a pond.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: We Need More Like This
Review: This book says it all. It tells us what is wrong with our world by contrasting it to an imagined world at the opposite social extreme to our own more mundane world. Utopia should not be read as a statement of how we should live but as a warning about everything that is wrong in the modern world. It is amazing to see how little we have learnt since this book was written.

This book is as relevant now as when it was written. It remains one of the greatest social comments of the modern world. This should not be the case but perhaps this indicates how the world has developed.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A good book
Review: This version of Utopia (Penguin Classics version) is better than the Sacks version by Bedford. Utopia is a terrific book and is an easy read even though there is a lot of interesting content.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Unreal dream.
Review: Thomas More dreams of a world of tolerance and antimilitarism, but also of collectivism and anticapitalism (a world without money). For him, a world based on private property cannot be prosperous and just. He considered all treaties between prosperous states as a conspiracy of riches.
So, he was more radical than the most diehard leftist of today.
His principal targets are kings, religious authorities and the landowners with their disastrous policy of enclosures, driving all farmers and their families into certain poverty and death.
He gives us also a juicy mockery of the Swiss, who sold themselves as mercenaries to the highest bidders.
This book is still a worth-while read.


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