In 1907, Upton Sinclair looked forward 93 years and imagined the year 2000, when capitalism would find its zenith with the construction of The Pleasure Palace, a glittering half-mile-high structure in the middle of Central Park. During the grand opening of the towering building, a scientific experiment with radiumite explodes killing everybody throughout the world except eleven of the people at the Pleasure Palace. They escape the deadly rays by flying high in the sky in a revolutionary 1000-mph airplane called “The Monarch of the Air!” The fortunate eleven survivors struggle to rebuild their lives by creating a capitalistic society. After that fails, along with several other inept efforts, they create a successful utopian society on the lush grounds of a grand country estate in the Pocantico Hills above the Hudson River. Sinclair’s life-long vision, “The Cooperative Commonwealth,” reigns happily forever after, in this classic of the literature of political imagination.
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