Books, Arts & Manners

From West to East: California and the Making of the American Mind, by Stephen Schwartz (Free Press, 542 pp., $30)

PLATO’S Republic opens with Socrates going “down to the Piraeus,” the seaport of Athens, where commerce dilutes parochialism and allows expansive speculation—a place especially conducive to the dreaming and dissecting of utopias.

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Harold Johnson

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From West to East: California and the Making of the American Mind, by Stephen Schwartz (Free Press, 542 pp., $30)

PLATO’S Republic opens with Socrates going “down to the Piraeus,” the seaport of Athens, where commerce dilutes parochialism and allows expansive speculation—a place especially conducive to the dreaming and dissecting of utopias.