A survey of fourteen lectures addressing the idea of utopia, presented by Fred E. Baumann, political science professor and director of the Public Affairs Conference Center at Kenyon College. Examines a number of key works on utopia and discusses efforts to put utopian principles into practice.

In his final novel, which he considered his most important, Aldous Huxley transports us to the remote Pacific island of Pala, where an ideal society has flourished for 120 years. Inevitably, this island of bliss attracts the envy and enmity of the surrounding world. A conspiracy is underway to take over Pala, and events are set in motion when an agent of the conspirators, a newspaperman named Faranby, is shipwrecked there. What Faranby doesn't expect...

A brave pet shop mouse named Hopper attempts to rebuild a fallen empire in the underground rat civilization of Atlantia, located in the subway tunnels of Brooklyn, while Queen Felina and her band of street cats declare open season on the rodents.