THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
'Listen out for Rutger Bregman. He has a big future shaping the future' Observer
'The Dutch wunderkind of new ideas' Guardian
In
Utopia for Realists, Rutger Bregman shows that we can construct a society with visionary ideas that are, in fact, wholly implementable. Every milestone of civilisation - from the end of slavery to the beginning of democracy - was once considered a utopian fantasy. New utopian ideas such as universal basic income and a fifteen-hour work week can become reality in our lifetime.
From a Canadian city that once completely eradicated poverty, to Richard Nixon's near implementation of a basic income for millions of Americans, Bregman takes us on a journey through history, beyond the traditional left-right divides, as he introduces ideas whose time has come.
The crisis of our times is not that we don't have it good, or even that we might be worse off in the near future, it's that we don't have the imagination to come up with anything better. A huge bestseller in the original Dutch, garnering plaudits from a swathe of eminent thinkers, Utopia for Realists overturns existing notions about how to run society with radical yet wholly practical ideas for a happier, healthier, wealthier world. From Universal Basic Income to a 15-hour working week, evidence is piled up for solutions to the problems of inequality and unhappiness escalating/growing across the globe today. 'If you're bored with hackneyed debates, decades-old right-wing and left-wing clichés, you may enjoy the bold thinking, fresh ideas, lively prose, and evidence-based arguments in Utopia for Realists' - Steven Pinker, author of The Blank Slate
The questions that Bregman poses must be addressed, and urgently