Looking Backward

Looking Backward: 2000-1887 is a utopian science fiction novel by Edward Bellamy, a lawyer and writer from Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts; it was first published in 1887. According to Erich Fromm, Looking Backward is "one of the most remarkable books ever published in America".

The sequel to Bellamy's Looking Backward, his utopian novel of several years earlier, where a young man falls asleep in 1887 and wakes in a utopian year 2000, where all social ills are solved. This novel continues the thread of his utopian vision. Equality begins when Julian West returns to the year 2000 to continue his education. The book describes an ideal society in that year. Equality was published just before his death and was not received nearly as well as Looking Backward.

Mania Salinger was born in Radom, Poland and enjoyed a childhood blessed with love, friends, and good luck until horrors unleashed by Nazi invasion changed her life forever. Many of her friends and family perished during the Holocaust, but Mania survived those horrific years working in multiple Nazi camps, including Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. Her optimistic spirit, shrewd instincts, and fierce determination to believe that life, and humanity, must prevail over evil helped her to endure.

'No person can be blamed for refusing to read another word of what promises to be a mere imposition upon his credulity.' Julian West, a feckless aristocrat living in fin-de-siècle Boston, plunges into a deep hypnotic sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000. America has been turned into a rigorously centralized democratic society in which everything is controlled by a humane and efficient state. In little more than a hundred years the horrors of nineteenth-century capitalism have been all but forgotten. The squalid slums of Boston have been replaced by broad streets, and technological inventions have transformed people's everyday lives. Exiled from the past, West excitedly settles into the ideal society of the future, while still fearing that he has dreamt up his experiences as a time traveller. Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888) is a thunderous indictment of industrial capitalism and a resplendent vision of life in a socialist utopia. Matthew Beaumont's lively edition explores the political and psychological peculiarities of this celebrated utopian fiction. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward: 2000-1887 (1888) is one of the most influential utopian novels in English. The narrative follows Julian West, who goes to sleep in Boston in 1887 and wakes in the year 2000 to find that the era of competitive capitalism is long over, replaced by an era of co-operation. Wealth is produced by an “industrial army” and every citizen receives the same wage. This edition contains a rich selection of appendices, including excerpts from Bellamy’s Equality and other writings; contemporary responses (by William Morris, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and others); excerpts from utopian works by Morris and William Dean Howells; and an excerpt from Henry George’s Progress and Poverty.

Essays chronicling the Jewish history of Chicago, from the late nineteenth century to the end of World War II. The history of Jews in Chicago is a fascinating, complex, and largely unknown story. Thanks to the unstinting efforts of Walter Roth, much of this history has been preserved. Now, for the first time, this material has been distilled into a single volume, chronicling events and people from the late nineteenth century to the end of World War II. There are six broad themes, each of which includes several essays: the first of which is “Chicago Jews and the Secular City: Builders, Movers, Shakers” about HL Mettes’s huge 1924 history of Chicago Jews; financier Lazarus Silverman; the U of C Centennial; Jewish participation in the World’s Columbian Exposition; Julius Rosenwald and the Museum of Science & Industry and the Jewish Day Pageant at the Century of Progress in 1933. The other five themes are “Chicago Jews and Anti-Semitism: Tragedy Abroad, Challenges at Home”; “Chicago Jews and Zionism: Local Idealists”; “Chicago Jews and Zionism: Renowned Visitors”; “Chicago Jews and the Arts: The Page and the Stage” and “Chicago Jews on Both Sides of the Law: Colorful Characters.” Anyone interested in Chicago history, ethnic history, Jewish history, will find Looking Backward a fascinating and informative read. Praise for Looking Backward “Roth writes about the well known and the not so well known, bringing to life the people, events, and institutions that shaped the Jewish community.” —Booklist

Julian West is an aristocrat in 19th century America. He has all that he would ever need, a happy engagement, wealth, and a pleasant place to live. Because of his comfortable place in society, Julian is unsympathetic to the plight of the middle and lower class, and even looks to their protests and strikes with distain and contempt. One day, to calm himself, he decides to be put in a hypnotic sleep by his doctor, in his own underground bunker. This was routine for Julian, but when tragedy in the form of a fire strikes, Julian is presumed dead and left in the bunker. A century later, Julian is found, but wakes to a world he could never predict. With the help of the man that found him, Doctor Leete, and Leete’s daughter, Edith, Julian becomes familiar with the 20th century American reality of equality between the sexes, the abolition of poverty, free education, and fair working conditions. Julian must then accept recognize his unempathetic views of the past, now understanding that life is better when people of all genders, classes, and race can be happy. But when Julian finds himself back in the 19th century, he struggles to convince others of his knowledge, and starts to wonder if the ideal 20th century was all a dream. Looking Backward was one of the most commercially successful novels of the 19th century, and upon its publication, inspired mass political movement. With the portrayal of the 20th century, Bellamy advocates for equality, and rejects war and capitalism. By depicting a happy working environment, where citizens had the freedom to choose their occupations, receive fair wages, and are able to retire at a reasonable time, Bellamy raises awareness for the working class. Looking Backward has since inspired the ideology of socialism, and proposes solutions to problems that America still struggles with today. This edition of Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy features a striking new cover design and is reprinted in a readable font. With these changes, the compelling plot and insight of Looking Backward is accessible and worthy of conversation.