Imperfect Ideal: Utopian and Dystopian Visions

The selections in Imperfect Ideal: Utopian and Dystopian Visions illustrate the best and worst of what can happen when we attempt to mold the complex communities in which we live into our vision of a perfect state. All 23 selections in this anthology challenge readers to question how society should be structured and governed, as well as what kinds of communities are most conducive to human fulfillment, both privately and in the civic arena.
Table of Contents
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Ursula K. Le Guin
Utopia
Thomas More
Utopia
Wislawa Szymborska
Iliad
Homer
The Shield of Achilles
W. H. Auden
A Paradise Built in Hell
Rebecca Solnit
Time
Riichi Yokomitsu
On the Cannibals
Michel de Montaigne
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Mencius
Mencius
The Politics
Aristotle
A Framework for Utopia
Robert Nozick
The City of God
Augustine
The Jewish State
Theodor Herzl
A New View of Society
Robert Owen
The Soul of Man Under Socialism
Oscar Wilde
The Economic Basics of the Withering Away of the State
Vladimir Lenin
We
Yevgeny Zamyatin
The Machine Stops
E. M. Forster
Black Box
Jennifer Egan
Jon
George Saunders
Time Capsule Found on a Dead Planet
Margaret Atwood
Silent Spring
Rachel Carson
Indicates a selection from a longer work.