Very useful for my purpose, but given that my purpose was 'help me construct a syllabus for a sophomore college class on utopian and dystopian literature,' I'm not sure it'll be useful for your purpose. Sargent has a decent pair of introductory paragraphs, but then turns the whole thing into a long list of utopian texts, traditions, theories and deeds, complete with ultra-compact plot summaries. The good news is that this makes the book perfect as a bibliographical reference tool. The bad news is that it just isn't very interesting. But it is reasonably well written, and a good starting point--and that's presumably the purpose of a very short introduction. Just don't expect a rollicking good time. ( )