Capstone Utopia: The Influential Classic

This was exactly what I've been searching for so long. What I searched for sooo long omgg!!!!!🤩🤩

This classic text represents the origin of the word 'utopia' and of its associated adjectives. 'Utopia' is particularly relevant now that the world is in the grip of a global pandemic. Many people have been thinking beyond the present to what elements, post-Covid, may frame a better world and a better society. Yet this would equally have been true for, say, the generations after the two World Wars - and indeed of people all over the world at various points in time. The concept of utopia is a universal theme that has been enduringly fascinating to contemplate down the centuries for all civilizations.In 'Republic', Plato was first to explore the notion of what a desirable society should be. Thomas More was an interesting man from a privileged background as he straddled two worlds - that of the political and of the spiritual. As a prominent figure within Tudor society, More also resonates with us as his fortunes changed over time in a way that we can recognise today as we witness the fortunes of movers and shakers in our own society alter in the intense and fast moving white heat of social media culture. In many ways, Utopia is a most accessible book.I'd say skip the introduction, read it later. Go straight to the text and form your own opinions. The book is set in New Baskerville type, clear and easy to read, which even contributes to understanding the text as the potential barriers of close print and a musty old book are not there. Written in 1516, this edition is of course sympathetic to the language of its day but Utopia is by no means impenetrable and reads very fresh.The story is that of a traveller describing a newly discovered island, Utopia, where the inhabitants share the same culture. This notion of the traveller is a constant of literature from Shelley's 'traveller in an antique land' to Kerouac's 'On the Road'. I would not fare well in Utopia where 'the women mostly deal in wool and flax which best suits their weakness'. But then I'm not convinced feisty women exactly fare well within our own culture centuries later!How we appreciate texts alters according to the perspectives of the society from which they're viewed. Diversity is not especially a feature of More's landscape of the imagination - but neither was it a feature of Tudor society. And we hardly need to look back many decades to find it not nearly so significant a concept as it now appears to be in our own society. What Utopia will do is to make you think, as sentient beings have thought down the ages, about what constitutes a decent society, what does not and what we should perhaps be striving for.

This is the second Capstone volume that I have acquired through Amazon Vine and I am mightily impressed with them. So much so that I have purchased 3 more. They are c£8 each but I got 2 for £11, an absolute bargain.As with the others, this is hardback, with a good introduction, supplying just enough information for a more general readership, including me. Great Baskerville type, very easy for me to read, unlike some books.Alright, the dust jacket is a bit quirky, covering just over half the cover, with title embossed on the front of the actual book, which is legible, but title and author embossed on the spine which barely is. So, you need the dust jacket if you want to read the title when the book is on a shelf. The jacket also serves to advertise other tomes in the series.Notice I have supplied no actual critique of Utopia itself. The quite excellent introduction does a superb job of highlighting the difficulty in establishing More’s actual intention and meaning.Quirk aside, I heartily recommend this edition of Utopia, clearly aimed at a more mass readership.

I read this many years ago now whilst at college but it was a long time ago when my mind was much younger and also at a time when I was still working out where I stood on certain subjects and values and beliefs and I loved the way this book presented many ideas so fluidly by way of a flowing dialogue which really helps you absorb the different viewpoints and explore how you feel about them by way of response in your mind as you read through. It was really enjoyable re-visiting this over the last month or so after so many years and from a now fairly different and matured perspective and I loved the moments of remembering certain parts and how differently I felt about some of the viewpoints all those years ago and would definitely recommend it on that front but also still today as a first time read for a younger mind, especially in this current day and age which is such a different and complex world.And I was especially pleased to get this particular version as we already have a large collection of the books in this particular/latest edition of classics from the new 'Capstone Classics' series which I really love - they're so nicely presented and published and a really great series to collect and so far the have all been very worthy replacements of some rather tatty previous/earlier editions we had of certain titles and grouped together they look great, too, and I like how they've kept a pretty uniformed approach with each title.Each has a very decent and well considered introduction which itself is worth reading and with this one as with a few others in the series it is given by Tom Butler-Bowdon who does a great job which is no surprise given he's written some very in depth and insightful commentaries on many works/similar titles in psychology and philosophy etc and this makes for a great little read before reading the full book. The quality of the cover with the embossing etc is lovely and adding to this the brilliant value for a very good quality and nicely presented hardback book making this a very easy five star recommendation for me.

Thomas Moore's Utopia is one of the original and best of the genre of writing that took its name. People debate to this day if Moore meant to endorse or ridicule the various aspects of the society he describes/reports upon, the word Utopia meaning "nowhere place" or "no place" and similar tropes like that are scattered throughout.Whatever the case may be its readable still/has aged well and usually is not describing radical ideas which actually read as passe and everyday to contemporaneous readers (like the list of proposed reforms in The Communist Manifesto actually does).Like other introductions in the series I think you can skip the one in this book and just go to the main text. There is a bit of information about Thomas Moore, the author, the book etc. It does contain some interesting material, I think it pales in comparison with the main text and would serve better as an afterword.The contents page is disappointing, it breaks the book up as it traditionally is, with Moore's letters, his meeting a sailor who imparts the tale of Utopia and then its "book one" and "book two". There are subheadings throughout the body of the text, so you can find "of their foreign policies", "of their commonwealth" etc. and it breaks up the text a little but I would love to have had that in the actual contents page to allow for a quick search.The story of Utopia may be familiar to many but the summary goes that Moore met a sailor who had visited a foreign land with seemingly fantastical conventions, traditions and norms, of proprietorship (much held in common), marriage (imagine something like "Naked Attraction" on the one hand but progressive divorce and separation norms too), religious pluralism (the only sanction being on evangelicals who threaten to ruin the harmony of the Utopians society) and war fighting (which prioritizes protecting non-combatants). Relevant and thought provoking yet.The book itself has all the series features, half cover sized wrap around "dust jacket", its coloured, distinguishing it from other books in the series, otherwise its a black hardback with black title embossed on the cover. The paper is a little plain and I think the typeset a little larger than it needs to be and spaced in a way that makes it a big of a larger book than otherwise. These are not a big enough deal to prevent me recommending the book and recommending this edition though. Recommended.