Kristian is one of CPL’s three Building Monitors. If you’ve spent time at CPL, there’s a good chance you’ve seen him walking around, greeting patrons and making sure everything is running smoothly in our public areas.
He recommends The Just City, by Jo Walton, which is available in both print and e-book (hoopla) formats.
Summary
The Just City imagines Plato’s utopia as an experiment by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene.
It is a planned community populated by over 10,000 children and a few hundred adult teachers taken from all eras of history, along with some handy robots from the far human future, all set down together on a Mediterranean island in the distant past to determine whether Plato’s ideal society could produce philosopher kings.
The reality is more complicated, as utopian ideals rarely play out as expected on actual human beings.
He recommends it because...
“I read The Republic two or three times between college and grad school, so the premise drew me in before I read page one. The characters are strong, develop over the course of the book, and in the spirit of the best utopian literature, it demonstrates that utopia isn't exactly what it is intended to be… or at least that one philosopher's ideal of utopia is not going to fit every inhabitant (or even the image of the character who first posited the idea).”
Who might enjoy it?
Kris recommends this book not only to lovers of classical political philosophy but also to readers who enjoy reimagining classical tales and mythology, such as Madeline Miller or Natalie Haynes's works.
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