From Sir Thomas More to Karl Marx to Marshall McLuhan, people have conjured fantastic, pragmatic, radical, and often stunning visions of what our future might be like. Fritzie P. Manuel, together with her husband, Harvard historian Frank Manuel, spent 25 years exploring this uniquely human and powerfully visionary activity. They ultimately published their research in a single towering work which instantly became the defining history of the utopian ideal and of the inspired individuals whose visions have changed the way we live and think today. Utopian Thought in the Western World received the National Book Award and remains essential reading on the subject in universities around the world. At the heart of this scholarly tome, however, one discovers the Manuels' own fundamental optimism and deeply humanistic ideals. Civilization could not properly develop, they believe, without the life-affirming futuristic dreams of its members; just as a person must dream in order to replenish their individual soul, so must a society, through the extraordinary visions of its most original and creative members, replenish, reinvent, and revitalize its own collective soul—capturing in a single vision what we all might one day strive to become.

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