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Erik Reece

Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea Hardcover – August 9, 2016

by Erik Reece (Author)

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For Erik Reece, life, at last, was good: he was newly married, gainfully employed, living in a creekside cabin in his beloved Kentucky woods. It sounded, as he describes it, "like a country song with a happy ending." And yet he was still haunted by a sense that the world--or, more specifically, his country--could be better. He couldn't ignore his conviction that, in fact, the good ol' USA was in the midst of great social, environmental, and political crises--that for the first time in our history, we were being swept into a future that had no future. Where did we--here, in the land of Jeffersonian optimism and better tomorrows--go wrong?

Rather than despair, Reece turned to those who had dared to imagine radically different futures for America. What followed was a giant road trip and research adventure through the sites of America's utopian communities, both historical and contemporary, known and unknown, successful and catastrophic. What he uncovered was not just a series of lost histories and broken visionaries but also a continuing and vital but hidden idealistic tradition in American intellectual history. Utopia Drive is an important and definitive reconstruction of that tradition. It is also, perhaps, a new framework to help us find a genuinely sustainable way forward.

" … an engaging exploration -- and example -- of the fruitful tunnel-visions of dreamers turned doers." - Publishers Weekly

Print length

368 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date

August 9, 2016
Dimensions

5.74 x 1.22 x 8.57 inches
ISBN-10

0374106576
ISBN-13

978-0374106577
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Chris Jennings
97
Hardcover
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Erik Reece is the author of Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness; Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia and An American Gospel: On Family, History, and the Kingdom of God. He has also written for Harper's Magazine, The Nation, and Orion Magazine. He is currently the writer in residence at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, where he teaches environmental journalism, writing, and literature.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition (August 9, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0374106576
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374106577
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.74 x 1.22 x 8.57 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,505,304 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #103 in Utopian Ideology
- #2,159 in Communism & Socialism (Books)
- #2,669 in Travel Writing Reference

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Jared

A Great Read If You Love American History

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 2, 2017

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I loved this book. I just listened to Sebastian Junger give a talk on his new book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging and I looked for information on intentional communities. I found an excerpt of this book in The Atlantic and I decided to purchase the book after reading the piece.

This book is a really enthralling read if you like history. Utopia Drive also got me thinking about economics in ways I never have before. Considering that I have read books on the history of money, that is saying something.

This book is very much worth reading if you are interested in American history.

4 people found this helpful

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Niala

An interesting on the ground survey of Utopian communities past ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 16, 2016

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An interesting on the ground survey of Utopian communities past and present in the US. The author has a partisan view, at time disarmingly naive, of the various ideologies and "monetary systems" that drove the various communes, but in a certain way it add to the interest in reading about the various Utopia. A more clinical and technical reviews of the ideologies would have been much less entertaining. In addition, the enthusiasm of the author help understand why people would join these movements and why after a while they might leave them. The author's sympathy for the utopian ideologies does not prevent him from being critical of the at time small mindedness of the communes leadership.

4 people found this helpful

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alan french

Intentional Communities

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 20, 2016

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anyone interested in thinking about the problems and opportunities of democracy as a political system will find this book both entertaining and instructive. It is a well-written combination of both history and evaluation. Thinking about "the commons", non-growth based economic systems, and what intentional communities may teach us about the practical aspects of democracy is a good starting place, despite the inevitable problems of "scaling up" systems based on "small is beautiful".

4 people found this helpful

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John Cirigliano

Hoanw clearly can describe & interest the reader? From page 1.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 12, 2018

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A literal tour de force of revelation of communities we all knew about but never before understood.

2 people found this helpful

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ACT I

Excellent book, in excellent condition!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 30, 2019

Perfectly satisfied!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 30, 2016

Verified Purchase

Erik's every stop on this odessy opened vistas into a unique utopian community essence. Reese gets you there!

One person found this helpful

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April Nunn

Love

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 3, 2018

Great read

Utopia: what we can learn from those who tried

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 9, 2016

We've all taken solitary walks to think through difficult questions, sometimes pausing to consult friends or mentors for advice. Utopia Drive is University of Kentucky writer-in-residence Erik Reece's version of that walk in search of the cure for America's income inequality, social strife and environmental degradation. Given Reece's style - a fan of burgers and baseball who, when offered a free drink, opts for a double martini - and the scope of his quest, his natural method of travel is a pickup truck outfitted with a boxful of CDs. Reece roams from New Harmony, Indiana to the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts to discover what the successes and failures of historic and current utopian communities can teach about how society can become more fair and sustainable.

Many scholarly books have been written about the Shakers, Robert Owen's New Harmony, the Oneida community and other utopian ventures, but this approach differs in that it is neither a strict economic case study nor a deep sociological analysis. Rather, it's an ongoing train of thought about democracy, human rights, stewardship of the earth and how religion and the nuclear family affect the success of communities. This book could have been drudgery, but the eccentricities and foibles of places he visits, such as the contemporary, highly disciplined Twin Oaks community in Virginia and its spinoff, the free-wheeling Acorn community, keep the narrative interesting. The Shakers, for example, were led by Mother Ann Lee, who settled the tension between family and community by banning sex, while the Oneida community, led by John Humphrey Noyes, attempted to resolve the same issue by encouraging sex among all members of the community.

Along the way, Reece broadens the definition of utopian communities by including thinkers such as Henry David Thoreau, shadow-box artist Joseph Cornell and anarchist Josiah Warren, who attempted to substitute work credits for federal currency and, to a limited extent, made it work.

If you are an anti-bank green pacifist, you'll find a lot to embrace in Reece's frequent diatribes about corporate greed, environmental destruction and the anti-egalitarian actions of the political system. If you're not, Reece will give you something to think about, whether you like it or not.

12 people found this helpful

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Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea Hardcover – August 9, 2016

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