Everything for Everyone

I love oral history and I love speculative fiction so I grabbed this as soon as I saw the title. But after reading the author and publisher profiles, I started to doubt that it would be an immersive imaginative experience. I was right—this is creatively packaged polemic. And I loved it! Hard-core lefty activists and people who thought the CHOP was romantic will find vindication and wish-fulfillment. But if you’re like me, and cafeteria meals, talk therapy, and dance parties are not your idea of utopia, you can still have a blast mentally debating the interviewees and pondering how history is produced. Contrary to the title, this book acts less as history and more as commemoration. Isn't it a bit ominous that we don’t hear from a single disgruntled communard? Once again, it’s history written by the victors. —Liz
P.S. I was sympathetic to a lot of the ideas but found the worldwide governmental collapse much more convincing than the ensuing worldwide organic communization. But it was an invigorating start to my reading for the year that is, alas, here.