Volume 27, Number 3 · March 6, 1980
The Great Good Place
By Harry Levin
Utopian Thought in the Western World
by Frank E. Manuel, by Fritzie P. Manuel
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 896 pp., $25.00
This is an exceptionally substantial and suggestive work, generously conceived, vivaciously written, richly documented, aptly illustrated, and attractively produced. The subject matter is necessarily controversial through its nature; the authors do not shy away from expressing definite opinions of their own; and, besides, it is frequently characteristic of utopian discourse to fall into a dialectical mode. I should therefore like to proffer my warm respects to Frank and Fritzie Manuel at once—to the scope, the quality, and the importance of their joint achievement—so that I may feel free to diverge at times from some of their interpretations and evaluations. Professor Manuel is justly esteemed for his studies in European intellectual history and in historiography, especially during the Enlightenment and the Romantic period. Mrs. Manuel is an accomplished scholar herself, who has collaborated with her husband notably in an anthology of French utopian thought.[1] Given the diverse terrains and the intricate topographies that this party of two set out to explore in the present inquiry, they have together covered an immense amount of ground.
Review, 3580 words
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