Anna Neima. The Utopians: Six Attempts to Build the Perfect Society. London: Picador, 2021. 320pp, $39.95.
“I saw a horse collapse in the street: the driver was knocked aside by the starving people, who rushed to cut chunks from the warm body to bring home to their families.” So wrote Eberhard Arnold , founder of the Bruderhof, in Germany in 1917. His observation captures a slice of the devastation that World War I wrought across the world. The sheer loss of life (20 million people, more than half of whom were civilians) was staggering , but the cultural and social disruptions were just as intense and widespread. The war (and the Spanish Influenza pandemic that overlapped it, also killing millions) shattered a widespread sense of confidence that technological development, national pride, and religious devotion would march onwards with a better life for all, leading many to rethink how mankind ought to think, believe, and live — and for some, to found communities where they could live out these new, idealistic aspirations.
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