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Title: Utopia Drive

Subtitle: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea

Author: Erik Reece

Narrator: James Patrick Cronin

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-09-16

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

For Erik Reece, life, at last, was good: He was newly married, gainfully employed, living in a creekside cabin in his beloved Kentucky woods. It sounded, as he describes it, "like a country song with a happy ending". And yet he was still haunted by a sense that the world - or, more specifically, his country - could be better. He couldn't ignore his conviction that in fact the good ol' USA was in the midst of great social, environmental, and political crises. Where did we - here, in the land of Jeffersonian optimism and better tomorrows - go wrong?

Rather than despair, Reece turned to those who had dared to imagine radically different futures for America. What followed was a giant road trip and research adventure through the sites of America's utopian communities, both historical and contemporary, known and unknown, successful and catastrophic. What he uncovered was not just a series of lost histories and broken visionaries but also a continuing and vital but hidden idealistic tradition in American intellectual history. Utopia Drive is an important and definitive reconstruction of that tradition. It is also, perhaps, a new framework to help us find a genuinely sustainable way forward.

Critic Reviews:

"Recommended for readers interested in travel writing, environmentalism, and U.S. history." (Library Journal)

Members Reviews:

An interesting on the ground survey of Utopian communities past ...

An interesting on the ground survey of Utopian communities past and present in the US. The author has a partisan view, at time disarmingly naive, of the various ideologies and "monetary systems" that drove the various communes, but in a certain way it add to the interest in reading about the various Utopia. A more clinical and technical reviews of the ideologies would have been much less entertaining. In addition, the enthusiasm of the author help understand why people would join these movements and why after a while they might leave them. The author's sympathy for the utopian ideologies does not prevent him from being critical of the at time small mindedness of the communes leadership.

Intentional Communities

anyone interested in thinking about the problems and opportunities of democracy as a political system will find this book both entertaining and instructive. It is a well-written combination of both history and evaluation. Thinking about "the commons", non-growth based economic systems, and what intentional communities may teach us about the practical aspects of democracy is a good starting place, despite the inevitable problems of "scaling up" systems based on "small is beautiful".

A Great Read If You Love American History

I loved this book. I just listened to Sebastian Junger give a talk on his new book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging and I looked for information on intentional communities. I found an excerpt of this book in The Atlantic and I decided to purchase the book after reading the piece.

This book is a really enthralling read if you like history. Utopia Drive also got me thinking about economics in ways I never have before. Considering that I have read books on the history of money, that is saying something.

This book is very much worth reading if you are interested in American history.

Quite a ride!

Erik's every stop on this odessy opened vistas into a unique utopian community essence.