These interdisciplinary concerns provide, in turn, the framework for the analyses of works of American literature that mirror their times and mores. It misses no opportunity to flesh out both the historical premises and the political promises behind the social policies and political events of the period. American Utopia and Social Engineering sets out to correct this amnesia. It insists, in short, on its exceptionalism. It insists on forgetting what preceded the headlines of today and on denying continuity with history. America insist on ignoring the context of its present dilemmas.

Worst of all, perhaps, it is afflicted with chronic and acute ahistoricism.

The United States today is afflicted with political alienation, militarized violence, institutionalized poverty, and social agony. It Can't Happen Here, or Politics, Emotions, and Philip Roth's The Plot Against America. We Better Kill That Instinct to Kill Before It Kills Us, or Violence, Mind Control, and Walker Percy's The Thanatos Syndrome

You'll Never Make a Monkey Out of Me, or Morality, Proverbial Wisdom, and Bernard Malamud's God's Grace You're Not in Canada Until You Can Hear the Loons Crying, or Voting, People's Power, and Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest How I Stopped Worrying and Loved Behavioural Engineering, or Communal Life, Evolution, and B.F. Introduction Life is More important Than Art, or Eutopia, Evolution, and Social Engineering.Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (p.

American Utopia by Peter Swirski