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

​Welcome to the first edition of the Alternative Living Book Club — where we read books to reimagine what's possible and find better ways to live together.

​Our first book, Everyday Utopia, explores how people throughout human history have lived what we'd call "alternatively" — and the forces preventing us from normalizing it today.

​Reading or listening beforehand is highly recommended (it's fantastic as an audiobook), but everyone is welcome regardless.

​Book Club Format:

• ​Reflections: 3–5 guests each give a 5-minute talk on tangible learnings from the book

• ​Deep Dive: Author Kristen Ghodsee responds with commentary, then shares a 10–15 minute overview informed by the discussion

• ​Open Q&A with Kristen

• ​Optional Overtime: Breakout rooms for deeper conversation and networking among people interested in communes and the broader communities movement

​About the book:

​A 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, anthropologist 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.

​About the Author:

​Dr. Kristen R. Ghodsee has been conducting primary ethnographic fieldwork in Eastern Europe for over 25 years, and has written widely on the history of socialism, capitalism, and the impact of political economic structures on ordinary life. She is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Her articles and essays have been translated into over 25 languages and have appeared in publications such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Jacobin, The New Republic, Le Monde Diplomatique, El País, and Die Tageszeitung. She’s appeared on the PBS NewsHour and France 24 as well as on dozens of podcasts, including NPR’s Throughline, WIRED’s Have a Nice Future, Vox’s The Gray Area, and The Ezra Klein Show.

​About the book club:

​This is an informal collaboration between @morellomunch and others interested in the communities and solarpunk movements.