From Eden to Levittown, the goal of shaping a perfect society has preoccupied theologians, philosophers, social radicals and commercial developers. A landmark exhibition at the New York Public Library traced this dream through the millennia with rare works from both sides of the Atlantic.
Late in the fall of 1848, that momentous year when revolution swept through Europe, the caricaturist known as Bertall published a satire of utopian thought called The Carnival of Ideas in one of ...