Dreams of Peace and Freedom: Utopian Moments in the Twentieth Century

By Jay Murray Winter

Book Overview

In the wake of the monstrous projects of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and others in the twentieth century, the idea of utopia has been discredited. Yet, historian Jay Winter suggests, alongside the "major utopians" who murdered millions in their attempts to transform the world were disparate groups of people trying in their own separate ways to imagine a radically better world. This original book focuses on some of the twentieth-century's "minor utopias" whose stories, overshadowed by the horrors of the Holocaust and the Gulag, suggest that the future need not be as catastrophic as the past.

The book is organized around six key moments when utopian ideas and projects flourished in Europe: 1900 (the Paris World's Fair), 1919 (the Paris Peace Conference), 1937 (the Paris exhibition celebrating science and light), 1948 (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), 1968 (moral indictments and student revolt), and 1992 (the emergence of visions of global citizenship). Winter considers the dreamers and the nature of their dreams as well as their connections to one another and to the history of utopian thought. By restoring minor utopias to their rightful place in the recent past, Winter fills an important gap in the history of social thought and action in the twentieth century.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300126026
• ISBN13: 9780300126020
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.0" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Utopian Ideals in the 20th Century

An excellent work on various utopian ideas of the 20th century. Winter's writing is very good and this makes for an enjoyable read. Winter focuses on "minor utopias," thus avoiding Nazism and Communism. He covers a number if different dreamers and attempts at making the world a better place--many of which are now almost forgotten. I very much enjoyed the chapter on the the role of Rene Cassin in the development of the Universal Declaration of human Rights of 1948. White writes: "What distinguishes them from others is that they then get up and (perhaps against reason or logic) do not turn cynical or passive, but manage to take a leap into the dark, and despite all, they dream dreams which reconfigure their initial commitment in new and imaginative forms." Indeed. We could use a few more of those types right now...