In Utopia

It's a sad fact about our human species that we can always imagine recipes for disaster better than those for success. So anytime bold dreamers conjure up a method for reaching paradise on Earth, even if it's crackpot and doomed, their schemes can seduce us. J. C. Hallman dissects six such blueprints for happiness with mordant tongue-in-cheek.

June 19: On this day in 1816, the Shelleys, Lord Byron, and entourage gathered at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva to tell the ghost stories that would trigger Frankenstein. This most legendary of storm-tossed evenings inspired…

Very few debut novels exhibit the charm, assurance, emotional depth and bravura fabulation which the lucky reader will discover in Helene Wecker's

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