Everyday Hopes, Utopian Dreams

Download or read book Everyday Hopes, Utopian Dreams written by Don Hanlon Johnson and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.