Frank Carlson Library

Across more than four decades, the conflict between the national government and Muslim liberation forces in the southern Philippines has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions. Two landmark agreements under the presidency of Benigno S. Aquino III-the first in 2012 and the second in 2014-raised high hopes that peace might finally be on the way. But the peace process stalled, and has yet to regain momentum, after a botched counterterrorism...

Mori and her friends live a normal life on Firefly Lane in Old Harmonie, a utopian community where every kid knows he or she is genetically engineered to be better and smarter, but when a strangely perfect new girl named Ilana moves in, the friends begin to question the only world they have ever known.

For the decade that followed the end of the cold war, the world was lulled into a sense that a consumerist, globalized, peaceful future beckoned. The beginning of the twenty-first century has rudely disposed of such ideas-most obviously through 9/11and its aftermath. But, just as damaging has been the rise in the West of a belief that a single model of political behavior will become a worldwide norm and that, if necessary, it will be enforced at gunpoint. In...

The New Atlantis is Sir Francis Bacon's creation of an ideal land where its citizens uphold the common qualities of "generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendor, piety and public spirit." This short 1627 utopian novel depicts the land of Bensalem, discovered by a European ship after becoming lost somewhere to the west of Peru. One of the crew narrates their look at the island's customs and institutions, especially their impressive

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Nix has spent her whole life journeying to places both real and imagined aboard her time-traveling father's ship. And now it's finally time for her to take the helm. Her father has given up his obsession to save her mother -- and possibly erase Nix's existence -- and Nix's future lies bright before her. Until she learns that she is destined to lose the one she loves. But her relationship with Kash -- best friend, thief, charmer extraordinaire -- is...

A fictional biography of Rudolf „Rud" Whitlow, who builds a political party that slowly becomes a world dominant dictatorship. Wells wrote the work just before World War II as Hitler was consolidating his power in Germany. Rud, is a baby boy, and later, grew to be a young man who had a remarkable talent of oratory: the gift of gab. He is eventually encouraged to perform public speaking, lecturing and finally, revolutionary speeches. Through this...

Utopian dreamers are deceived and deceiving. Their "fight for the people" rhetoric may sound good at first, but history proves egalitarian governments create poverty and misery. Utopians believe that through their own personal brilliance a better society can be created on earth. When the belief in man as a creation in the image of God is completely rejected, the use of slavery and mass execution can be justified in the name of the creation of a utopian...

In keeping with the inquisitive spirit of their times, two 17th-century writers envisioned their own philosophical and intellectual utopias. Tomasso Campanella, a Calabrian monk, published The City of the Sun in 1623, and Francis Bacon's The New Atlantis appeared in 1627. Campanella was a student of logic and physics; Bacon focused on politics and philosophy. Despite differences in setting and treatment, both authors employed the latest methods of...

Barnstaple, a burnt out journalist, decides to go on holiday and leave the rat race behind. He leaves his family at home and hits the road. His car along with several others are miraculous transported 3,000 years into an alternate future. The world he lands in, a veritable utopia, has a history very much like his own but for small details. Mankind has left behind its governments and religions for good or ill. Each person lives a life of their own...

W. H. Hudson's trailblazing story of a pastoral utopia that harbors a dark secret After a landslide, Smith awakens groggy and confused. The landscape around him has changed dramatically. He wanders through the countryside, searching for any semblance of civilization, until a family takes him in. As he recounts what happened to him and where he came from, it dawns on Smith that he has somehow left his own world behind and awoken somewhere entirely...