Customer Reviews

Is It Utopia Yet?: An Insider's View of Twin Oaks Community in Its Twenty-Sixth Year

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I visited the Twin Oaks commune in 2002 and was amazed at the size of it as well as the sophistication of their housing, dining center, and production warehouse. Also, the people there were pretty cool and progressive. I bought every book they had about the place at their little book store.

Is It Utopia Yet captures the lifestyle of people at Twin Oaks about as well as any written book could. Kat Kinkade was one of the founders over 35 years ago and is one of the very few who has seen Twin Oaks evolve from its very beginnings to what it is today. The book is full of funny cartoons that poke fun at the life of Twin Oaks too.

If you're interested in the concept of economic democracy where workers themselves make decisions over how the production process is run, you should get this book. If offers a glimpse of what a possible better future could be... a real, live, breathing model that exists in the here and now.

Kat has given us a close-up view of what it is like to live at Twin Oaks Community. As a regular visitor since 1993, I can say that her book captures the benefits, joys, and strains of living in community, and many of the quirks of Twin Oaks in particular.

Kat's writing is as lucid as her thinking. A must read for anyone considering community or thinking about visiting Twin Oaks.

Over a decade old, Is It Utopia Yet?, remains the essential text introducing Twin Oaks, now 40 years on, America's highest profile and most successful intentional community.

With witty cartoons (by T.O. member Jonathan Roth) extrapolating personable, organized prose, co-founder Kat Kinkade riffs on the title query, playing with palpable relish the role of the avuncular, wry debunker of her own idiosyncratic, yet primary, role in building a sustainable piece of Sixties mythology - then living with (and in) it as Twin Oaks matured and mutated into a living organism independent of her initial design.

So the 'angle' here is Kinkade provides both insider and outsider accounts of Twin Oaks. Vivid, honest, warm and entertaining. Cheers to the good life!

Easy to read, fun and honest. Does it miss anything? Most likely it does, does it gloss over anything, perhaps. But what is life in community like, it covers it. Is it a manual on how to start a community... NO, but it is a look at a community from the heart of one of it's founder.

Highly recommend this book!

kat's at it again! her personal style makes this second accounting of the history of twin oaks read like a conversation with an old friend. supplemented with great cartoons, it's a funny book for those involved within the communities movement & those who never even knew there was such a thing.

though i've yet to make it out to twin oaks, i have met some incredible people who make their home there & am currently a part of an urban commune. this book helped my family see a bit clearer what my vision for life is & how it's not just a bunch of crazy, drug addicted, occultists that wish to live together recreating the world they've inherited.