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Editorial Review Product Description
When did Americans first believe they were at the center of a truly global culture? How did they envision that culture and how much do recent attitudes toward globalization owe to their often utopian dreams? In Utopia and Cosmopolis Thomas Peyser asks these and other questions, offers a reevaluation of American literature and culture at the dawn of the twentieth century, and provides a new context for understanding contemporary debates about America’s relation to the rest of the world. Applying current theoretical work on globalization to the writing of authors as diverse as Edward Bellamy, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, William Dean Howells, and Henry James, Peyser reveals the ways in which turn-of-the-century American writers struggled to understand the future in a newly emerging global community. Because the pressures of globalization at once fostered the formation of an American national culture and made national culture less viable as a source of identity, authors grappled to find a form of fiction that could accommodate the contradictions of their condition. Utopia and Cosmopolis unites utopian and realist narratives in subtle, startling ways through an examination of these writers’ aspirations and anxieties. Whether exploring the first vision of a world brought together by the power of consumer culture, or showing how different cultures could be managed when reconceived as specimens in a museum, this book steadily extends the horizons within which late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature and culture can be understood. Ranging widely over history, politics, philosophy, and literature, Utopia and Cosmopolis is an important contribution to debates about utopian thought, globalization, and American literature. Customer Reviews (23) 
Please help me!
Please say this review is helpful to you.They told me that if I post another unhelpful review they're going to kill my ferret.
Transcendent -- This Book literally changed My Life
You know, this is not the sort of book I would normally read. But there it was, suddenly, on the coffee table one night. How it got there I have no idea. Just curious, I began to leaf through the pages, and the words began to resonate with me. Unable to sleep, I read it through in one sitting by candlelight. The next morning, I began to look at things around me differently. First, I removed several unessential appliances from the house in an effort to simplify my existence. Then it became time to de-clutter and I threw out several items I realized I had no more use for. Then, and this all seemed so logical in light of the things I'd read, I divorced the wife and sent her on her why. Sure, she cried a bit, but I knew I was doing the right thing. And I've never regretted it. This is, indeed, one of the best books I've read all year.
not what you expect
I don't usually tolerate so-called theory, but this was fun! Don't let the title fool you--this is a down-to-earth, engaging work that deserves to be read by a much larger audience than the academic field it's probably relegated to.
Powerful, bleak book
This is a powerful, bleak book. None of the writers Peyser deals with is particularly optimistic. The possible exception is Howells but there is a dark undertow even to his work which Peyser makes sure we see. So a bookabout utopia is also a strangely, depressing read. 40 years or so afterBrooke Farm, who would have thought things would have gotten so sad? Ofcourse it was the turn the century and the best of the Western thinkerswere thinking sad and pessimistic thoughts. And now here we are at the turnof another century and we have this powerful, bleak book. Have we come allthat far after this century of bloodthirsty carnage? Is Utopia even furtheraway than it was 100 years ago? Read Peyser's powerful, bleak book and seeif you can answer some of these sad questions yourself. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
A Return of Peyser's Aphasia
It was obvious to anyone who has known Peyser that something like this was bound to happen.I refer, of course, to Peyser's bout of aphasia during his freshman year at the College. Clearly this mysterious illness hasreturned in book-length, perhaps even a global, form.We may never reallyknow what Peyser is up to in this book. Oh, for some Young and Champollionto decode this, the Rosetta Stone of post-modernism!
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