The Story of Utopias

In his first book, Lewis Mumford surveys the long human habit of imagining perfect societies, from Plato’s Republic and Thomas More through Bacon, Andreae, Fourier, Bellamy, and the industrial reformers who followed. He treats each vision as a mirror of the age that produced it, weighing what these ideal commonwealths reveal and where they fail. Mumford draws a sharp line between what he calls utopias of escape, which offer private daydreams and comfort, and utopias of reconstruction, which try to remake the shared world. Written in 1922, the book set the direction for his later work on cities, technology, and civilization. You can download the complete text free as a PDF and EPUB edition.