The concept of utopia /

When Sir Thomas More penned his Renaissance classic Utopia, he punned upon the meanings of eutopia, the good place, and outopia, no place. Thinkers have ever since been faced with a confused meaning of the term; the resulting cloudiness of theory and research has been a consequence. Levitas, a sociologist, has undertaken the sizeable task of clarifying the term utopia. To accomplish this, she reviews the ideas of Marx, Sorel, Mannheim, Bloch, and Herbert Marcuse, with chapters or partial chapters on each. A full chapter is also devoted to William Morris, author of News from Nowhere (1890), whose contributions to utopian thought are just being fully realized. The book is a well-reasoned and clearly written treatment of the definition of utopia. It is a useful complement to American concerns (Levitas is British); the interest is closer to the macrosocietal theory-making that has been part of the European tradition in utopian thought. Whether this book will bring closure to the debate about the meaning of utopia is doubtful--the concept has several thousand years of multilayered meanings and history to muddle things. The debate itself is useful, however, and competent essays such as this one are always welcome. Upper-division undergraduates and above. E. J. Green Prince George's Community College