Cohousing-L Mailing List: Book review: Everyday Utopia: What 2000 years of wild experiments can teach us about the good life

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Goodreads says: 
Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the 
Good Life


Kristen R. Ghodsee4.0943 ratings13 reviewsA dazzling tour through 2,000 years 
of audacious utopian thinking and experiments, exploring better ways to arrange 
our daily lives, plus a globetrotting jaunt to the communities already putting 
these seemingly fanciful visions into practice today.

In the 6th century BCE, the Greek philosopher Pythagoras—a man remembered today 
more for his theorem about right-angled triangles than for his progressive 
politics—founded a commune in a seaside village in what’s now southern Italy. 
The men and women there shared their property, lived as equals, and dedicated 
themselves to the study of mathematics and the mysteries of the universe.

Ever since, humans have been dreaming up better ways to organize how we live 
together, share our property, raise our children, and determine who’s part of 
our families. Some of these experiments burned brightly for only a brief 
while—but others carry on today.

In Everyday Utopia, fascinatingly feminist thinker Kristen R. Ghodsee whisks 
you away on a tour through history and around the world to explore those places 
that have boldly dared to reimagine how we might live our daily lives: from the 
Danish cohousing communities that share chores and deepen neighborly bonds to 
matriarchal Colombian ecovillages where residents grow all their own food; and 
from Connecticut, where new laws make it easier for extra “alloparents” to help 
raise children not their own, to China, where planned microdistricts ensure 
everything a busy household might need is nearby.

One of those startlingly rare books that upends what you think is possible, 
Everyday Utopia offers a radically hopeful vision for how to build more 
contented and connected societies, alongside a practical guide to what we all 
can do in the meantime to live the good life each and every day.