Contains descriptions that offer a lens for recovering the deep soul of America-one that deserves attention as a model for progressives and anyone concerned the directions the country has taken in response to 9/11.

Finding his idealism challenged by the reactionary forces that have proliferated in the post-9/11 world, Don Hanlon Johnson felt a need to recover more sober visions of hope amid the many reasons for despair and cynicism. Everyday Hopes, Utopian Dreams is a bracing backward turn toward the diverse and often conflicting visions passed down to Johnson by his immigrant ancestors who settled in the Sacramento Valley in the nineteenth century. Through stories about neighbourhood, local churches, hunting and fishing, driving, cooking, heavy construction and schools, he examines what in his forebears' ideals continue to nurture Americans and what aspects of those ideals carry germs of personal and social harm. Johnson's descriptions offer a lens for recovering the deep soul of America-one that deserves attention as a model for progressives and anyone concerned the directions the country has taken in response to 9/11.