In Utopia: Six Kinds of Eden and the Search for a Better Paradise

Hallman (The Chess Artist), reflects that “as a rule, utopias slip” and it’s from this perspective that he explores six contemporary versions of an “exuberant plan or philosophy intended to perfect life lived collectively.” Hallman explores Pleistocene Rewilding, a plan to introduce lions and rhinoceroses into the American landscape to fulfill the ecological functions of extinct animals such as saber-toothed tigers and giant sloths. He joins Twin Oaks, the 43-year-old community based on the ideas of behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner and travels to Italy to gastronomically compare futurism with the slow food movement. Perhaps the strangest utopia he encounters is the World, a co-op cruise ship for the wealthy, endlessly traveling the seas. Certainly the scariest is a proposed Second Amendment–inspired town, Front Sight, where all citizens would be armed. Hallman entertains with an ironic, Alain de Botton style of erudite bonhomie and scads of self-referential postmodernism, but his intellectual embrace is copious and his conclusion sincere: “the failure of good intentions should not be met with inaction, but with further good intentions, with better intention.” (Aug.)