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Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life Audiobook
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A dazzling tour through 2,000 years of audacious utopian thinking and experiments, exploring better ways to arrange our daily lives, plus a globetrotting jaunt to the communities already putting these seemingly fanciful visions into practice today.
In the 6th century BCE, the Greek philosopher Pythagoras—a man remembered today more for his theorem about right-angled triangles than for his progressive politics—founded a commune in a seaside village in what’s now southern Italy. The men and women there shared their property, lived as equals, and dedicated themselves to the study of mathematics and the mysteries of the universe.
Ever since, humans have been dreaming up better ways to organize how we live together, share our property, raise our children, and determine who’s part of our families. Some of these experiments burned brightly for only a brief while—but others carry on today.
In Everyday Utopia, fascinatingly feminist thinker Kristen R. Ghodsee whisks you away on a tour through history and around the world to explore those places that have boldly dared to reimagine how we might live our daily lives: from the Danish cohousing communities that share chores and deepen neighborly bonds to matriarchal Colombian ecovillages where residents grow all their own food; and from Connecticut, where new laws make it easier for extra “alloparents” to help raise children not their own, to China, where planned microdistricts ensure everything a busy household might need is nearby.
One of those startlingly rare books that upends what you think is possible, Everyday Utopia offers a radically hopeful vision for how to build more contented and connected societies, alongside a practical guide to what we all can do in the meantime to live the good life each and every day.
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"Kristen Ghodsee has boldly gone where few would dare to tread. In this warm, intelligent, and lucid book, she takes us on a deep dive into how people have created better systems for living—systems that actually work. With clear-eyed views of how utopian communities can promote human thriving, she offers hope in a time when we desperately need new ways of imagining the future.” —Robert Waldinger, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Life and director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development"
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My god, this book is what I need right now! Exhilarating, good humored, and forward looking, it’s blown open my brain. What a powerful reminder that dreaming of better worlds is not just some fantastical project, but also a very serious political one.” —Rebecca Traister, New York Times bestselling author of Good and Mad
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More could be possible than we imagine—that’s the liberating and inspirational message of Kristen Ghodsee’s sweeping feminist history of society at its most creative. What a gift she’s given us with this mind-broadening investigation into how for millennia our fellow human beings have reckoned with the toughest questions of fidelity, family, and love.” —Ada Calhoun, New York Times bestselling author of Why We Can't Sleep
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Utopia is back! And it ought to be taken seriously, as history is made by the dreamers. If you want to open up new futures for our private lives, please have a look at this refreshing book. A must-read.” —Thomas Piketty, New York Times bestselling author of A Brief History of Equality
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Invigorating writing for a cheerless era. Having explained to us Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism, Kristen Ghodsee is back with another splendid insight: utopia can, and ought to, be an everyday thing, in every home.” —Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek Minister of Finance and author of Talking to My Daughter About the Economy
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Perfect for readers interested in utopian societies, history, and sociology and for those looking for an uplifting look at what the future may hold.” —Booklist
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Clear-eyed yet exuberant, wide-ranging yet intimate, this is an inspiring call for imagining a better future.” —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
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Lively…. Though Ghodsee’s proposals are decidedly utopian, readers who think deeper about them may agree that reshaping society is not such an unworkable thing after all.” —Kirkus Reviews
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About Kristen R. Ghodsee
Kristen R. Ghodsee has her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and is professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She has written six books on gender, communism, and post-communism in Eastern Europe, examining the everyday experiences of upheaval and displacement that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Ghodsee also writes on women's issues for the Chronicle of Higher Education and is the co-author of Professor Mommy: Finding Work/Family Balance in Academia. Her articles and essays have appeared in publications such as Eurozine, Dissent, Foreign Affairs, and The New York Times.
About Lisa Flanagan
Lisa Flanagan is a classically trained soprano, comedian, voice-over artist, and Earphones Award–winning narrator.