Utopia (English Classics S.) (Penguin Great Ideas) (Yale Nota Bene)

by Saint Thomas More

P. Turner (Translator)

Sir Thomas More's entertaining description of Utopia, an island supporting a perfectly organized and happy people, was a best-seller when it first appeared in Latin in 1516. This work of a Catholic martyr has later been seen as the source of Ana-baptism, Mormonism, and even communism. Utopia revolutionized Plato's classical blueprint of the perfect republic, mainly by its realism. Locating his island in the (then) New World, More endowed it with a language and poetry, and detailed the length of the working day and even the divorce laws. Such precision gives a disturbing and exciting impact to Utopia, which still remains a book of the future.

• ISBN10: 0140441654
• ISBN13: 9780140441659
• Publish Date: 30 June 1969 (first published December 1908)
• Publish Status: Unknown
• Out of Print: 8 February 2005
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Pearson Education Limited
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 160
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

Wit, satire, irony— such a powerful force. Of course it’s contradictory; of course the utopia also qualifies as dystopia. It dares to think differently, and speaks truth to power in the days when, if More did it directly instead of sideways through satire, such a thing would land him in the Tower. (He landed there anyway.)

A brilliant read for the history and hypocrisy contained in that time and place, and also our own.

(I might be in the minority, but book 1 > book 2.)