In 2005, J.C. Hallman came across a scientific paper about "Pleistocene Rewilding," a peculiar idea from conservation biology that suggested repopulating bereft ecosystems with endangered "megafauna." The plan sounded utterly utopian, but Hallman liked the idea as much as the scientists did-perhaps because he had grown up on a street called Utopia Road in a master-planned community in Southern California. Pleistocene Rewilding rekindled in him a longstanding fascination with utopian ideas, and he went on to spend three weeks at the world's oldest "intentional community," sail on the first ship where it's possible to own "real estate," train at the world's largest civilian combat-school, and tour a $30 billion megacity built from scratch on an artificial island off the coast of Korea. In Utopia explores the history of utopian literature and thought in the narrative context of the real-life fruits of that history.
"In Utopia is funnier, wiser, sadder, and, surprisingly, more hopeful than Thomas More's misunderstood classic. J.C. Hallman brilliantly explores the idea of utopia and its application in the real world, from hippie communes to shooting ranges to a massive floating city. We could hardly ask for a better guide: Hallman is an erudite but humble writer, with the skepticism, wit and compassion necessa
Jeff Sharlet, New York Times bestselling author of The Family.
"J.C. Hallman has thought deeply about human utopias and the impulses that originate them, and he has taken his curiosity on the road with the liveliest results. In Eutopia is impassioned, anecdotally exploratory, and alert with an insight and wit. Hallman's non-judgmental gaze registers at every turn the eternal face-off between the pure products of idealistic imagination and the implacable gravi
Sven Birkerts, author of The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age
"Who doesn't want to stand in paradise on earth? The first time I saw the likes of it, it was in its Mexican village remains of Paracho and Tzintzuntzán, where Bishop Vasco de Quiroga's utopian experiment played out in the 16th century. In In Utopia, J.C. Hallman travels to all its living historical worlds, taking notes, getting the botany, the biology, the geography, touching the divine and the
Dagoberto Gilb, author of The Magic of Blood and The Flowers
