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Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Philip Stevens. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Christopher Brooke. Thomas Hobbes lived through the Thirty Years War and Britain's civil wars, and the trauma of these events led to his great masterpiece of political thought. How could humankind rescue itself from life in the natural state, which was 'poor, nasty, brutish and short'? What form of politics would provide the security that he and his contemporaries craved? Vilified and scorned from the moment it was published, Leviathan was publicly burnt for sedition, but ever since it has exercised a unique fascination upon its readers, both for its ideas and its remarkable prose. Its concepts helped to drag Europe into a new world - one in which we still live today.PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio. Read more

A better world is possible.🧾This professionally-presented edition has been thoroughly proofread and has good margins with a font size that is easy on the eyes.🧾Kropotkin points out the flaws inherent in capitalism, which is incompatible with human nature. Our current economic system creates poverty and scarcity even though there are enough resources for everybody, but he gives us hope that a better system is possible.Peter Kropotkin was born a Russian prince whose father owned 1,200 serfs. As he aged, he came to hate the inequality in his society, and renounced his royal title. He was imprisoned and spent decades in exile for his views. Read more

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is a short book first published in 1880 by German-born socialist Friedrich Engels. The work was primarily extracted from a longer polemic work published in 1876, Anti-Dühring. It first appeared in the French language.The book has been an enormously popular book, and enjoys a level of prestige that ranks it alongside The Communist Manifesto. It explores the difference between early socialists (considered utopian) and the modern scientific socialists embodied in Karl Marx.The book explains the differences between utopian socialism and scientific socialism, which Marxism considers itself to embody. The book explains that whereas utopian socialism is idealist, reflects the personal opinions of the authors and claims that society can be adapted based on these opinions, scientific socialism derives itself from reality. It focuses on the materialist conception of history, which is based on an analysis over history, and concludes that communism naturally follows capitalism. Read more

Say the word Israel today and it sparks images of walls and rockets and a bloody conflict without end. Yet for decades the symbol of the Jewish State was the noble pioneer draining the swamps and making the deserts bloom: the legendary kibbutznik. So what ever happened to the pioneers' dream of founding a socialist utopia in the land called Palestine? Chasing Utopia: The Future of the Kibbutz in a Divided Israel draws listeners into the quest for answers to the defining political conflict of our era. Acclaimed author David Leach revisits his raucous memories of life as a kibbutz volunteer and returns to meet a new generation of Jewish and Arab citizens struggling to forge a better future together. Crisscrossing the nation, Leach chronicles the controversial decline of Israel's kibbutz movement and witnesses a renaissance of the original vision for a peaceable utopia in unexpected corners of the Promised Land. Chasing Utopia is an entertaining and enlightening portrait of a divided nation where hope persists against the odds. Read more

PROJECT 2025 EXPLAINED: THE COMPLETE AND ACCESSIBLE GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING AMERICA'S POLITICAL FUTUREDo you feel overwhelmed by the complexity of Project 2025 and its potential consequences?Do you want a clear and unbiased explanation of how this plan could reshape democracy, the economy, and civil rights?Are you looking for a detailed yet accessible analysis without having to read 920 pages of official documents?Project 2025 is an ambitious plan aiming to radically transform the U.S. government, impacting every citizen. However, the available information is often dense and biased. This book provides a clear, impartial, and well-researched guide to help you understand the true meaning of these policy proposals and their potential effects on the country.Here’s what you’ll discover in this book:✔ A chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the Heritage Foundation’s plan, simplified and clearly explained.✔ The impact on social and economic policies, including civil rights, taxation, education, and healthcare.✔ Who is behind Project 2025? Uncover the key players, funding sources, and political strategies driving this agenda.✔ Fact-checked data and reliable sources, without alarmist tones or distorted interpretations.✔ Essential tools for political debate, so you can discuss Project 2025 with confidence and knowledge.Imagine finally having a clear vision of how political decisions will shape your future. With this guide, you’ll be fully informed and prepared for the upcoming elections, cutting through speculation and propaganda.If you want to understand the future of American politics without sifting through hundreds of complex pages, this book is for you.📖 Get your copy now and gain a clear, unbiased perspective on Project 2025! Read more

Could Artificial Intelligence Soon Become Humanity’s New Ruler?Imagine a world where critical decisions—economic policies, judicial verdicts, even global diplomacy—are no longer made by humans, but by powerful AI systems. In the groundbreaking book Aiocracy: A Future Governed by AI, author Dael Astra explores a captivating vision of what society might look like when artificial intelligence is entrusted with the ultimate authority to govern humanity.Astra masterfully examines the transformative promise of AI governance, from eliminating corruption and inefficiency to ensuring fair, unbiased, and optimized resource management. Yet this compelling vision is balanced by an unflinching exploration of its profound risks: potential loss of privacy, ethical dilemmas, accountability gaps, and threats to human autonomy. Could embracing AI rule elevate humanity—or cost us our most cherished freedoms?Blending illuminating real-world case studies, insightful historical parallels, and vivid speculative scenarios, Astra makes complex and futuristic concepts remarkably accessible to all readers. Tackling profound philosophical questions around free will, morality, and the essence of human identity, this book invites you to confront a rapidly approaching reality—one that will shape our lives, societies, and very humanity itself.Urgent, relevant, and deeply thought-provoking, Aiocracy is a must-read for anyone interested in technology, politics, philosophy, and our shared future. Are you ready to understand the world we are rapidly creating?Click "Buy Now" to discover how artificial intelligence might soon reshape the very foundations of human civilization.Dael Astra is an acclaimed writer and futurist, known for exploring the intersection of technology, ethics, and human potential with clarity, insight, and compelling vision. Read more

Utopia (1516) is a work of political satire by Thomas More. Published in Latin while More was serving as Privy Counsellor under King Henry VIII, the text is stylized as a true account of a new civilization discovered in the New World by traveler Raphael Hythlodaeus. While there have been varying interpretations of Utopia over the centuries, it is most consistently regarded as a work of political philosophy in the tradition of Plato’s Republic that satirizes European society by contrast with the laws and traditions of the Utopian people. “The island of Utopia is in the middle two hundred miles broad, and holds almost at the same breadth over a great part of it, but it grows narrower towards both ends. Its figure is not unlike a crescent.” For centuries, Utopia has been seen as an essential work of Renaissance humanism for its vision of a just and highly organized political system characterized by the abolition of private property, communal values, full employment, and free accessible healthcare. While scholars have long debated whether More envisioned his Utopia as a positive representation of society or as merely an unattainable vision of life on earth, his work remains an essential contribution to political discourse that continues to inform readers today. This edition of Thomas More’s Utopia is a classic work of English literature reimagined for modern readers.Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe. Read more

First published in Latin in 1516, Utopia was the work of Sir Thomas More (1477–1535), the brilliant humanist, scholar, and churchman executed by Henry VIII for his refusal to accept the king as the supreme head of the Church of England. In this work, which gave its name to the whole genre of books and movements hypothesizing an ideal society, More envisioned a patriarchal island kingdom that practiced religious tolerance, in which everybody worked, no one has more than his fellows, all goods were community-owned, and violence, bloodshed, and vice nonexistent. Based to some extent on the writings of Plato and other earlier authors, Utopia nevertheless contained much that was original with More.In the nearly 500 years since the book's publication, there have been many attempts at establishing "Utopias" both in theory and in practice. All of them, however, seem to embody ideas already present in More's classic treatise: optimistic faith in human nature, emphasis on the environment and proper education, nostalgia for a lost innocence, and other positive elements.In this new, inexpensive edition, readers can study for themselves the essentials of More's utopian vision and how, although the ideal society he envisioned is still unrealized, at least some of his proposals have come to pass in today's world. Read more

During the Great Depression, the Los Angeles area was rife with radical movements. Although many observers thought their ideas unworkable, even dangerous, Southern Californians voted for them by the tens of thousands. This book asks why. To find answers, author Errol Wayne Stevens takes readers through the history of such movements as the Utopian Society, Dr. Francis Townsend’s old-age revolving pension plan, Upton Sinclair’s End Poverty in California gubernatorial campaign, and Retirement Life Payments, known as Ham and Eggs. The book also examines the Los Angeles Communists and the free-market capitalists, both quasi-religious movements with large followings, as well as the self-help cooperatives, a spontaneous upsurge of neighbors who came together to help one another in a time of desperate need. As to these movements’ extraordinary popularity, Stevens finds the standard explanations unpersuasive. He debunks the idea that naïve, unsophisticated Southern Californians, living aimless, empty lives, suffering from ennui, and longing for community, readily supported charismatic leaders who promised a way out of the Great Depression. In Stevens’s telling, Southern Californians supported these movements because they spoke to their needs. Fearful or desperate, some elderly and hopeless, Angelenos cared less about the programs’ feasibility than about their promise of relief. As one Ham and Eggs supporter succinctly explained: “It may be a racket and maybe it won’t work more than a couple of weeks, but that will be $60 more than I ever got before for one vote.” Finding parallels between past and present, readers might wonder why people remain loyal to programs that prove unrealistic, or why voters continue to support leaders who reveal, time and again, their ignorance or dishonesty. In its illumination of a troubled time in American history not so long ago, this book offers insight into our own.   Read more

Imagine a perfect society where equality, justice, and harmony prevail. In Utopia, Thomas More presents a visionary exploration of an ideal world, offering a profound critique of the social and political issues of his time.Through the narrative of a traveler, Raphael Hythloday, More introduces the fictional island of Utopia, a place of communal living, religious tolerance, and ethical governance. Contrasting sharply with 16th-century Europe, Utopia challenges readers to consider the possibilities of a better, more equitable society.A cornerstone of political philosophy, Utopia is a timeless classic that continues to spark meaningful discussions about humanity, governance, and the pursuit of perfection. Perfect for readers of history, philosophy, and social thought. Read more

By the middle of the twenty-first century, war, famine, economic collapse, and climate catastrophe had toppled the world's governments. In the 2050s, the insurrections reached the nerve center of global capitalism—New York City. This book, a collection of interviews with the people who made the revolution, was published to mark the twentieth anniversary of the New York Commune, a radically new social order forged in the ashes of capitalist collapse.Here is the insurrection in the words of the people who made it, a cast as diverse as the city itself. Nurses, sex workers, antifascist militants, and survivors of all stripes recall the collapse of life as they knew it and the emergence of a collective alternative. Their stories, delivered in deeply human fashion, together outline how ordinary people's efforts to survive in the face of crisis contain the seeds of a new world. Read more

What we can learn from a Renaissance nowhereIn 1516, a book was published in Latin with the enigmatic Greek-derived word as its title. Utopia―which could mean either "good-place" or "no-place"―gives a traveler's account of a newly discovered island somewhere in the New World where the inhabitants enjoy a social order based purely on natural reason and justice. As the traveler describes the harmony, prosperity, and equality found there, a dramatic contrast is drawn between the ideal community he portrays and the poverty, crime, and often frightening political conditions of 16th century Europe. Written by Sir Thomas More (1477–1535)―then a rising intellectual star of the Renaissance and ultimately the advisor and friend of Henry VIII who was executed for his devoutly Catholic opposition to the king―Utopia is as complex as its author.In the form of a Platonic dialogue, Utopia explores topics such as money, property, crime, education, religious tolerance, euthanasia, and feminism. Claimed as a paean to communism (Lenin had More's name inscribed on a statue in Moscow) as often as it has been seen as a defense of traditional medieval values, Utopia began the lineage of utopian thinkers who use storytelling to explore new possibilities for human society―and remains as relevant today as when it was written in Antwerp 500 years ago.Explore the issues like feminism, euthanasia, and equality through Renaissance eyesEarly communist tract or a defense of medieval values? You decide.Peer inside the enigmatic mind of the man who dared stand up to Henry VIIIAppreciate the postmodern possibilities of Platonic dialoguePart of the bestselling Capstone Classics series edited by Tom Butler-Bowdon, this edition features an introduction from writer, economist, and historian Niall Kishtainy. Read more

In 1970, Margaret Grundstein abandoned her graduate degree at Yale and followed her husband, an Indonesian prince and community activist, to a commune in the backwoods of Oregon. Together with ten friends and an ever-changing mix of strangers, they began to build their vision of utopia.Naked in the Woods chronicles Grundstein’s shift from reluctant hippie to committed utopian—sacrificing phones, electricity, and running water to live on 160 acres of remote forest with nothing but a drafty cabin and each other.  Grundstein, (whose husband left, seduced by “freer love”) faced tough choices. Could she make it as a single woman in man’s country? Did she still want to? How committed was she to her new life? Although she reveled in the shared transcendence of communal life deep in the natural world, disillusionment slowly eroded the dream. Brotherhood frayed when food became scarce. Rifts formed over land ownership. Dogma and reality clashed. Many people, baby boomers and millennials alike, have romantic notions about the 1960s and 70s. Grundstein’s vivid account offers an unflinching, authentic portrait of this iconic and often misreported time in American history. Accompanied by a collection of distinctive photographs she took at the time, Naked in the Woods draws readers into a period of convulsive social change and raises timeless questions: how far must we venture to find the meaning we seek, and is it ever far out enough to escape our ingrained human nature? Read more

Walden Two Communities: Where Are They Now? Science of Behavior, Si! (and What Is It?); Growing Up at Los Horcones; Path with a Behaviorist Heart; Communal Child Rearing at Twin Oaks; Could Skinner’s Fictional Community Work In the Real World?; Damanhur: A Magical Mystery Tour. Read more

From the Shakers to the Branch Davidians, America's communal utopians have captured the popular imagination. Seventeen original essays here demonstrate the relevance of such groups to the mainstream of American social, religious, and economic life. The contributors examine the beliefs and practices of the most prominent utopian communities founded before 1965, including the long-overlooked Catholic monastic communities and Jewish agricultural colonies. Also featured are the Ephrata Baptists, Moravians, Shakers, Harmonists, Hutterites, Inspirationists of Amana, Mormons, Owenites, Fourierists, Icarians, Janssonists, Theosophists, Cyrus Teed's Koreshans, and Father Divine's Peace Mission. Based on a new conceptual framework known as developmental communalism, the book examines these utopian movements throughout the course of their development--before, during, and after their communal period. Each chapter includes a brief chronology, giving basic information about the group discussed. An appendix presents the most complete list of American utopian communities ever published. The contributors are Jonathan G. Andelson, Karl J. R. Arndt, Pearl W. Bartelt, Priscilla J. Brewer, Donald F. Durnbaugh, Lawrence Foster, Carl J. Guarneri, Robert V. Hine, Gertrude E. Huntington, James E. Landing, Dean L. May, Lawrence J. McCrank, J. Gordon Melton, Donald E. Pitzer, Robert P. Sutton, Jon Wagner, and Robert S. Weisbrot. Read more

A vision to address our environment, economy, politics, culture, and to catalyze the radical whole-system change we need nowRecasting current problems as emergent opportunities, Terry Patten offers creative responses, practices, and conscious conversations for tackling the profound inner and outer work we must do to build an integral future. In practical and personal terms, he discusses how we can all become active agents of a transformation of human civilization and why that is necessary to our continued survival. Patten's narrative focuses on two aspects of existence--our dynamic but fractured and threatened world, and our underlying wholeness and unity. Only by honoring both of these realities simultaneously can we make sustainable changes in ourselves, our communities, our body politic, and our planetary life-support system. A New Republic of the Heart provides a comprehensive understanding and inspiring vision for "being the change" in a way that can address the most intractable problems of our time. Patten shows how we can come together in our communities for conversations that matter and describes new communities, enterprises, and forms of dialogue that integrate both inner personal growth work with outer awareness, activism, and service. Read more

A journey through American utopian communities past and present, and a meditation on what we can learn from them.“Reece has a sharp eye for the contradictions of communities that condemn the capitalist economy but are sustained by vibrant commercial enterprises . . . [Utopia Drive] vividly bring[s] to life the ecological sensitivity, inclusiveness, and egalitarianism that inspired so many in early America.” —Akash Kapur, The New YorkerFor Erik Reece, life, at last, was good: he was newly married, gainfully employed, living in a creekside cabin in his beloved Kentucky woods. It sounded, as he describes it, “like a country song with a happy ending.” And yet he was still haunted by a sense that the world—or, more specifically, his country—could be better. He couldn’t ignore his conviction that, in fact, the good ol’ USA was in the midst of great social, environmental, and political crises—that for the first time in our history, we were being swept into a future that had no future. Where did we—here, in the land of Jeffersonian optimism and better tomorrows—go wrong?Rather than despair, Reece turned to those who had dared to imagine radically different futures for America. What followed was a giant road trip and research adventure through the sites of America’s utopian communities, both historical and contemporary, known and unknown, successful and catastrophic. What he uncovered was not just a series of lost histories and broken visionaries but also a continuing and vital but hidden idealistic tradition in American intellectual history. Utopia Drive is an important and definitive reconstruction of that tradition. It is also, perhaps, a new framework to help us find a genuinely sustainable way forward.“From the Shaker communities of Kentucky to modern-day cooperatives in the Northeast. . . . Ed Reece explores the history of the utopian impulse on American soil with a sense of urgency about the current moment in our country.” —Ray Suarez, NPR’s All Things Considered“An engaging exploration—and example—of the fruitful tunnel-visions of dreamers turned doers.” —Publishers Weekly Read more

What if women were safe and had full agency over their lives and bodies? What if all spaces were women's spaces? What if men's classically masculine traits like strength, risk-taking, and systematizing were useful, prosocial, and not toxic? What if men took a step back from their conquests and surrendered to the natural authority of women? Gynarchy is a way of life that encompasses personal, political, and social relationships. It is the radical claim that women are natural leaders and rulers, and men can find unmatched fulfillment in supporting, serving, and pleasing them. It's based on eight pillars: Consent, Bodily Autonomy, Abundance, Collaboration, Network, the Hive, Conflict Resolution, and the Feminine as Divine. These core principles come together to create a shift in how we wield power. Take a tour of history, biology, religion, families, economics, psychology, and sexuality from a different perspective. Find out what it's like to see the world through the Gynarchist lens. In a follow-up to 150 Years of Gynarchy, Viola Voltairine takes us on a journey from the earliest known creation myth to a future of interconnected micro-societies called Hives, run by women and venerating the Feminine. The Feminine is active, not passive and submissive. She is playful, cyclical, and creative. As every culture knew at some point in their history, She is the origin of the Universe. Read more

This book may become to the reality of the past five years what Winston Smith’s diary proposed it might become within the fictional world of 1984. It is intended, first of all, as a permanent record of events that only a few comprehended — in the depths of their meanings and significance — while they were happening; a book — as Winston said — ‘For the future, for the unborn’.In that future it may be hard to persuade people that what happened from the spring of 2020 really did happen. Either the past will have been erased to such an extent that no one will know human liberty ever existed, or else a revolution of human consciousness will make it improbable that human beings could ever have so easily been duped into surrendering the rights and freedoms their ancestors had won in blood.A fake pandemic was the signal that one morning began the foreclosure on everything that had, until the evening before, been axiomatically central to the idea of liberal, democratic, constitutional republics. The most shocking thing was not so much that this started to happen, but that almost no one seemed to object to it happening; almost no one sought to cite or defend the rights and liberties being overturned. Liberals fell silent; leftists joined in the clamouring for more and more tyranny.In The Abolition of Reality, John Waters describes not just what happened but the meaning of what happened, in the course of what may well be judged by history — if there is a historiographical record of the times to come — as the most heinous crime of all time.About the AuthorJOHN WATERS (b. 1955) Having started his career in 1981 with the Irish Music journal Hot Press, John Waters was a columnist with The Irish Times between 1990 and 2014. His first book, Jiving at the Crossroads (1991) became a massive best-seller. He went on to write and publish nine other books, including An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Ireland (Duckworth, 1997), Was it for this? Why Ireland lost the plot (Transworld Ireland, 2012) and Give Us Back the Bad Roads (Currach Press, 2018). He has written a number of plays for stage and radio and contributed to the American magazine First Things and the British magazine The Spectator. Since September 2020, he has been publishing his work twice weekly on Substack, via his newsletter/website John Waters Unchained. The Abolition of Reality is his eleventh book. Read more