What one reviewer at amazon said about Utopia (Bedford Book in History and Culture (Paper)):
This book is foundational. I mean that in every sense of the word. This book has been applied in so many ways to so many organizations, so many lives, so many countries, and even religions. To read this book is to look through the eyes of hundreds upon hundreds of historical figures that have existed since it was written in 1516.
I think it's safe to say that everyone, at some point in their lives, has sat down and thought about "Utopia." I know I did. You think, "Well, if everyone worked equal amounts and everyone shared equal amounts, there would be plenty of things for everyone, and everyone would be happy." This book takes that idea and stretches it to it's greatest extremes, incorporating politics, military strategies, religions, lifestyles... Everything that makes up a country. It really sounds like it could work... Except for the fact that humans are human.
And More goes into that. With every new idea he proposes, he is already responding to your counter-statements by explaining how the people in Utopia act a certain way, believe a certain way, or he'll take another key element of the Utopian system and use that in his defense as well. He knows that humans are flawed in many ways, but Utopia is all about perfection... And so therefore the Utopians are perfect. In the book he says, "They never find fault about other ways of life, or boast about their own." (122). Only in Utopia.
However, don't get the idea that the Utopian system is truly perfect, because it has its own contradictions. Reading through the book, I found at least 4 contradictions of itself, but I think More did this on purpose. He knows this place can never exist, and it seems like he threw a few loopholes in there to remind the reader of that.
Another thing that is really enlightening about this book is the first half of it, and how it ties in to modern American life. To me, it is clearly obvious that America was partly based on it. I've talked to people that don't feel similarly, but if you read through it and think about how much it parallels modern life in America, it really stands out. I still believe that the Founding Forefathers of America all had copies of this book at their sides while deciding how this new country should be run. Read it and you'll understand.
Another great thing about reading this book is the insane amount of great quotes there are. More has a wonderful talent of saying what's obvious about the world, but saying it in a way that's terrifically accurate and concise... Making you think, "Man, that's EXACTLY how it is! If people only knew..." I have something on every other page highlighted in my copy of this book. Literally. Sometimes more frequent than that.
Overall, I give this book the highest reccommendation possible. Read it with an open mind, a highlighter in hand, and a place to jot down notes nearby. Once you start reading, you have a flood of epiphanies coming to you, and it's nice to be able to look back on them and think you're smart :). Prepare to be enlightened, because this is one of the best eye-openers you could possibly find.
Begins:
Henry VIII., the unconquered King of England, a prince adorned with all the virtues that become a great monarch, having some differences of no small consequence with Charles the most serene Prince of Castile, sent me into Flanders, as his ambassador, for treating and composing matters between them. I was colleague and companion to that incomparable man Cuthbert Tonstal, whom the King, with such universal applause, lately made Master of the Rolls; but of whom I will say nothing; not because I fear that the testimony of a friend will be suspected, but rather because his learning and virtues are too great for me to do them justice, and so well known, that they need not my commendations, unless I would, according to the proverb, "Show the sun with a lantern."
More's "Utopia" was written in Latin, and is in two parts, of which the second, describing the place ([Greek text]--or Nusquama, as he called it sometimes in his letters--"Nowhere"), was probably written towards the close of 1515; the first part, introductory, early in 1516. The book was first printed at Louvain, late in 1516, under the editorship of Erasmus, Peter Giles, and other of More's friends in Flanders. It was then revised by More, and printed by Frobenius at Basle in November, 1518. It was reprinted at Paris and Vienna, but was not printed in England during More's lifetime. Its first publication in this country was in the English translation, made in Edward's VI.'s reign (1551) by Ralph Robinson. It was translated with more literary skill by Gilbert Burnet, in 1684, soon after he had conducted the defence of his friend Lord William Russell, attended his execution, vindicated his memory, and been spitefully deprived by James II. of his lectureship at St. Clement's. Burnet was drawn to the translation of "Utopia" by the same sense of unreason in high places that caused More to write the book. Burnet's is the translation given in this volume.
The name of the book has given an adjective to our language--we call an impracticable scheme Utopian. Yet, under the veil of a playful fiction, the talk is intensely earnest, and abounds in practical suggestion. It is the work of a scholarly and witty Englishman, who attacks in his own way the chief political and social evils of his time. Beginning with fact, More tells how he was sent into Flanders with Cuthbert Tunstal, "whom the king's majesty of late, to the great rejoicing of all men, did prefer to the office of Master of the Rolls;" how the commissioners of Charles met them at Bruges, and presently returned to Brussels for instructions; and how More then went to Antwerp, where he found a pleasure in the society of Peter Giles which soothed his desire to see again his wife and children, from whom he had been four months away. Then fact slides into fiction with the finding of Raphael Hythloday (whose name, made of two Greek words [Greek text] and [Greek text], means "knowing in trifles"), a man who had been with Amerigo Vespucci in the three last of the voyages to the new world lately discovered, of which the account had been first printed in 1507, only nine years before Utopia was written.
Designedly fantastic in suggestion of details, "Utopia" is the work of a scholar who had read Plato's "Republic," and had his fancy quickened after reading Plutarch's account of Spartan life under Lycurgus. Beneath the veil of an ideal communism, into which there has been worked some witty extravagance, there lies a noble English argument. Sometimes More puts the case as of France when he means England. Sometimes there is ironical praise of the good faith of Christian kings, saving the book from censure as a political attack on the policy of Henry VIII. Erasmus wrote to a friend in 1517 that he should send for More's "Utopia," if he had not read it, and "wished to see the true source of all political evils." And to More Erasmus wrote of his book, "A burgomaster of Antwerp is so pleased with it that he knows it all by heart."
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