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Rating: Summary: excellent edition with a few minor errors Review: Generally, this is a very good edition of utopia. The translation from Latin is clear and very readable. Furthermore, the critical texts are a great help to the student. Now I don't have to run off to collect them from various magazines. In principle the inclusion of other utopias is a good idea as well. However, I was somewhat disturbed by the editorial notes on "Looking backward". It does not seem to me as if Mr. Adams has read very much of the novel. For instance, I found his comments on the role of women in the book misleading.
Rating: Summary: Breath taking Review: The vivid imagery in this book is so absolutely unbelievable, it's breath taking. What would a perfect society do? Say? Eat? Sir Thomas More gives his version of the perfect society in all its splendor in Utopia. This book is throughly enjoyable for people 12 and above. If you've ever dreamed of a perfect society this is the book for you.
Rating: 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.
Rating: Summary: Between the Middle Ages and the future Review: Thomas More's incredible, influential work, has one foot in the Middle Ages and the other in the Renaissance. More reflects on the Middle Ages, but was not yet ready for the Lutheran reformation. More offers both humor (for example, using gold as chamber pots), and political thinking on capitalism. I however think his Utopia is a reflection of the monastic system (without severe asceticism) rather than communism. I'm sure it is no accident that geographic the island of Utopia is similar to England. It is ironic that More did not heed Raphael's advice about servitude to the king. The inclusion of the humanist letters adds further to the humor. This fine edition includes important predecessor such as Plato's republic and the Acts of the Apostles. Description from Amerigo Vespucci's first voyage, calls to mind Rousseau's "Noble Savage". With the inclusion of selections from Ovid to Brave New World this book includes almost two millennium of utopian thinking.
Rating: Summary: Between the Middle Ages and the future Review: Thomas More's incredible, influential work, has one foot in the Middle Ages and the other in the Renaissance. More reflects on the Middle Ages, but was not yet ready for the Lutheran reformation. More offers both humor (for example, using gold as chamber pots), and political thinking on capitalism. I however think his Utopia is a reflection of the monastic system (without severe asceticism) rather than communism. I'm sure it is no accident that geographic the island of Utopia is similar to England. It is ironic that More did not heed Raphael's advice about servitude to the king. The inclusion of the humanist letters adds further to the humor. This fine edition includes important predecessor such as Plato's republic and the Acts of the Apostles. Description from Amerigo Vespucci's first voyage, calls to mind Rousseau's "Noble Savage". With the inclusion of selections from Ovid to Brave New World this book includes almost two millennium of utopian thinking.
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