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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Matthew Loftus
Matthew grew up in a family of 15 children and completed his medical training in Baltimore, Maryland. Since 2015, he and his family have lived in East Africa, where he currently teaches and practices Family Medicine at a mission hospital. His work has appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Atlantis, and Mere Orthodoxy and his first book is forthcoming from InterVarsity Press. You can learn more about his work and writing at www.matthewandmaggie.org and preorder his forthcoming book here: https://www.ivpress.com/resisting-therapy-culture
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