Looking Backwards 2000 – 1887 by Edward Bellamy is fittingly enough, a great window for us to see a snapshot of culture and politics of the tail end of the 19^th century/ beginning of the 20^th century. While many of the other books that we have read this term such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin were political in nature, Looking Backwards is far more politics then it is narrative. The vast majority of the book is just Bellamy expressing how great the world would be under his Cristian socialist ideas and exposition about the world far exceed other more narrative based elements. The world Bellamy envisioned is one where industry and technology combined with socialism and cooperation have created a utopia. This utopian and pro-technology world was quite popular at the time as the late 19^th century technological boom and the rise in utopian ideologies such as communism and anarchism caused many to believe that utopia was just around the corner. Unfortunately, these dreams would be crushed after the world wars when the world saw the failure of utopian ideologies and the pain and destruction that technology could cause. Because of this, the world described in Looking Backwards becomes less a promise for the future and more of a window to the ideas of the past. one question I have is if Bellamy ever thought that people would be reflecting on his work 18 years after the future date his novel was set and could he ever have even imagined the world that we live in now?