by Thomas More
I wasn’t sure what to expect when reading this book. I’d read it was a satire and then the guy who wrote the introduction to the version I was reading insisted it wasn’t a satire. One commentator named William Roper said that Saint Thomas More was fond of a jest and that even those who knew him could sometimes not tell when he was joking. Roper said, “Much of this whimsical humor is implicit in the “Utopia”; and while it contains elements in which he had a firm belief, it is more than probable that much of it was in the highest degree tentative, and some of it consciously paradoxical.”
It was quite a book. There were, I thought, many good ideas in there and many ideas that were insane. So, I hope he wasn’t being serious about the insane ones. The book itself flowed well and kept the reader interested. The first part, Book 1, introduced Book 2, which was really just an in-depth description of the country of Utopia. It was certainly an interesting book and one that would be great to read in a book club or class. Utopia would be fertile seed for much discussion.
I would recommend this book based entirely on how thought provoking it is. Happily, it is also an interesting read. (And it’s on Jospeh Pearce’s list of Literature that Catholics should read.)
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