Friday, June 01, 2012

Pg. 99: Howard Segal's "Utopias"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Utopias: A Brief History from Ancient Writings to Virtual Communities by Howard P. Segal.

About the book, from the publisher:
This brief history connects the past and present of utopian thought, from the first utopias in ancient Greece, right up to present day visions of cyberspace communities and paradise.
  • Explores the purpose of utopias, what they reveal about the societies who conceive them, and how utopias have changed over the centuries
  • Unique in including both non-Western and Western visions of utopia
  • Explores the many forms utopias have taken – prophecies and oratory, writings, political movements, world's fairs, physical communities – and also discusses high-tech and cyberspace visions for the first time
  • The first book to analyze the implicitly utopian dimensions of reform crusades like Technocracy of the 1930s and Modernization Theory of the 1950s, and the laptop classroom initiatives of recent years
Learn more about Utopias: A Brief History from Ancient Writings to Cyberspace Communities at the publisher's website.

Howard P. Segal is Bird Professor of History at the University of Maine, where he has taught since 1986.

The Page 99 Test: Utopias.

--Marshal Zeringue