Imperfect Ideal

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.