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by: Thomas More
Amazon.com's Price: $9.00 Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 335.02
EAN: 9780140449105
ISBN: 0140449108
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 176
Publication Date: May 06, 2003
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Release Date: April 29, 2003
Sales Rank: 5699
Studio: Penguin Classics
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Revised introduction; new chronology and further reading
Translated with an Introduction by Paul Turner.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Good food for thought if you can get past the writing
I read this book out of curiousity mostly. Considering it was written several hundred years ago, it was a challenge to get over the dry writing. There isn't a story here as much as a listing of daily practices and customs in Utopia. Some silly, some almost ingenious.
The underlying theme is an example of a perfect society; but at aprice - personal freedoms. What I also found interesting was that a few of the ideals contridicted themselves throughout the novel. Everyone is equal, ... Read More
Rating:  - Silly and Appealing
This is an odd little book. I read it years ago but only remembered the golden chamber pots. I reread it yesterday and today. The chamber pots are still there, as is a strange blueprint for an ideal society, or at least one version of ideal.
The account is in the form of a traveler named Raphael speaking to the author about his experiences in Utopia, an island in the New World. In Utopia there is no private property and no need for money as everyone's needs are met. Each person ... Read More
Rating: - A Surprising Saint
I suspect this translation is a paraphrase of the original Latin. Nevertheless, it has the virtue of being lively and very readable. More is a Catholic saint, which makes much of what he says in Utopia very surprising indeed. The Tudor functionary who persecuted Protestant heretics advocates religious toleration, married priests, the abolition of private property and the pursuit of scientific knowledge as an end in itself. He shows himself to be a thorough humanist and a sort of proto-socialist. ... Read More
Rating:  - Utopia: 'a place that does not exist'
I first read this book in my impressionable and idealistic youth (some time in the second half of the last century). I've read it a couple of times since then and still enjoy the way that the book can be read as either a satire (my current preferred reading) or as a description of an ideal society.
This is a very short book and well worth reading - even for those of us without Latin who can only read it in translation.
Recommended.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Rating: - An Intellectually Fun and Stimulating Read
More exhibits intellectual creativity in the classic Utopia, originally written in Latin. It is a narrative on a non-existent, ideal society. The book Utopia includes the Utopian alphabet, a poem in Utopian and then translated into English, lines on the island of Utopia by the poet laureate, More's letters to Peter Gilles, Gilles's letter to Busleiden, Book 1, and Book 2.
The alphabet and poems at the beginning immediately display the creative and structured thought of More, introduce the ... Read More
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