Ecotopia: the notebooks and reports of William Weston [Paperback]

Ernest Callenbach (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Banyan Tree Books: distributed by Bookpeople (1969)
• ASIN: B002QUHJ1K
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,443,792 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

70 of 79 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I love this book, but........, March 22, 2004

By 

"efoff" (Ecotopia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ecotopia (Paperback)

This is one of those books that only a mother could love. This is one of my favorite books, but all the critical reviews are correct: the writing style flips back & forth between pretentious & wooden, the characters either shallow or dopey (usually both). This book is no "A Tale of Two Cities." In fact, for this kind of story, Thomas Moore's "Utopia," Bellemy's "Looking Backward"--and probably everything written by Jules Verne are better stories....Way better (especially Moore, the grand-daddy of the genre).

I still love this book, because of all that. When written during the 1970s, it was so "out there" for its time--that reading it now is terribly dated. It's almost like watching 1950s movies about space flight....But this book (in its own weird way) was an important book that helped inspire the environmental movement. No, it's not Rachal Carsons's "Silent Spring," but it reads a heck of a lot better than "Unsafe at any Speed."

If you're in your forties (or older), and want a drift back to the "future" of 1970, or you're younger & want to know why your parents are so weird--Read this book. Or if you are an environmentalist, and want to know where your roots lie--this is a good book to read.

But if you don't have any special interest, and are just looking for a ripping good yarn to pass a rainy saturday afternoon....It's not this book, babe.

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ecotopia - worth thinking about, February 9, 2003

By 

John Seidel (Colorado Springs, Colorado) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ecotopia (Paperback)

I read this book in the early 90's while living in Corvalis, Oregon. At that time you could see and experience bits and peices of "Ecotopia" at Nearly Normal's restaurant, The Beanery, and New Morning Bakery. Callenbach takes communal eco-feminist ideas and extends them to imagine a new society based on them. I do not think I would like to live in Ecotopia. Parts of it appeal to me, parts of it don't. But it was well worth the visit. Ten years later I still think about this book, and recommend it. If you are an ideological literalist, don't go there. You won't like it. If you want to explore the consequences of ideas and values, you will find Ecotopia a useful place to think about the world as it is and the world as it could be.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Originally a news report about sewage...., August 5, 2000

By 

Art Kleiner (Metropolitan New York, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ecotopia (Paperback)

This book has a fascinating history. Originally written as a news essay about the places to dispose sewage, it became one of the few viable utopian novels written since 1984 and Brave New World -- genuinely utopian, rather than anti-utopian. Of course, it's really about moving to Northern California in the 1970s, or Northern California as the Northern Californians hoped it would become. The internal combustion engine is outlawed, and babbling brooks flow down San Francisco's Market Street. Ecotopia's most engaging quality is the portrait that Callenbach provides of the golden young people of the counterculture, living the informal, thumb-your-nose- at-authority-but- build-a-world-together spirit that American culture had beaten down. (The spirit is mostly gone, but the novel remains.) Interestingly, Callenbach was a former Organizational Development consultant, and the corporations described in Ecotopia -- collaborative enterprises owned by the participants -- are not that different from the dot-coms of today.