CIIS Faculty Publications

Everyday Hopes, Utopian Dreams: Reflections on American Ideals

Everyday Hopes, Utopian Dreams: Reflections on American Ideals

Description

Finding his idealism challenged by the reactionary forces that have proliferated in the post-9/11 world, Don Hanlon Johnson felt a need to recover more sober visions of hope amid the many reasons for despair and cynicism. Everyday Hopes, Utopian Dreams is a bracing backward turn toward the diverse and often conflicting visions passed down to Johnson by his immigrant ancestors who settled in the Sacramento Valley in the nineteenth century. Through stories about neighborhood, local churches, hunting and fishing, driving, cooking, heavy construction, and schools, he examines what in our forebears' ideals continue to nurture us and what aspects of those ideals carry germs of personal and social harm. Johnson's descriptions offer a lens for recovering the deep soul of America—one that deserves attention as a model for progressives and anyone concerned the directions our country has taken in response to 9/11.

ISBN

1556435991

Publication Date

2006

Publisher

North Atlantic Books

City

Berkeley, California

Keywords

Don Hanlon Johnson-Childhood and youth, Social problems-United States, Social values-United States

Disciplines

Family, Life Course, and Society | Social and Cultural Anthropology

Everyday Hopes, Utopian Dreams: Reflections on American Ideals

Share

COinS