Overview
Told in a series of essays that balance memoir with fieldwork, Heaven Is a Place on Earth is an idiosyncratic study of American utopian experimentsāfrom the Shakers to the radical faerie communes of Short Mountain to the Bronx rebuilding movementāthrough the lens of one womanās quest to create a more communal life in a time of unending economic and social precarity.
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When Adrian Shirkās father-in-law has a stroke and loses his ability to speak and walk, she and her husbandāboth adjuncts in their midtwentiesābecome his primary caretakers. The stress of these new responsibilities, coupled with navigating Americaās broken health-care system and ordinary twenty-first-century financial insecurity, propels Shirk into an odyssey through the history and present of American utopian experiments in the hope that they might offer a way forward.
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Along the way, Shirk seeks solace in her own community of friends, artists, and theologians. They try to imagine a different kind of life, examining what might be replicable within the histories of utopia-making, and what might be doomed. Rather than āno place,ā Shirk reframes utopia as something that, according to the laws of capital and conquest, shouldnāt be able to existābut does anyway, if only for a moment.
This book title, Heaven Is a Place on Earth (Searching for an American Utopia), ISBN: 9781640093300, by Adrian Shirk, published by Catapult (February 1, 2022) is available in hardcover. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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