"A spirited tour through 2,500 years of utopian thinking and experiments to tease out better ways of imagining our domestic lives - from childrearing and housing to gender roles and private property - and a look at the communities putting these seemingly fanciful visions into practice today"--

Traces the author's research into his family's history after learning that his grandfather had been a Nazi SS officer, describing his discoveries of how his grandfather embodied the persona of an ideal soldier whose fortunes reflected the rise and fall of the Nazi party.

Explores the circumstances and events that contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler, noting his early character flaws and how he rallied a small group of like-minded political and social outcasts in history-shaping ways.