What I've Been Reading: Nonfiction

I think I'm staying on hiatus from novel_gazing for awhile, but one of the things that means is that I haven't talked much about what I'm reading except in tiny bits and pieces, as it free-associates to something else. And I've just finished two more library books this morning, so it seems like time.

( June reading, nonfiction )

The problem with history and geography -- and science -- and literature, if it comes to that, and the rest of art -- the world, really -- is that everything touches. (<--voice of a small child whose peas are in the gravy against her will) And I'm not disinterested in enough stuff. So I read Celebration, U.S.A., and not only do I want more stuff about that particular social experiment, my brain wraps it up with some of the motivations that led people to utopian communes in the 19th century, and with earlier suburban experiments, and it all rattles and sticks and jostles other things loose, and there's not enough time to read it all.

Also, does anybody know of a utopian or semi-utopian social experiment that appealed or appeals to large numbers of racial-ethnic minorities? The reasons why most such experiments didn't or don't appeal seem abundant (and, frankly, sensible on the part of the racial-ethnic minority groups in question). I was just wondering if anybody had managed to get past those reasons in the planning of their particular corner of utopia.