“[L]ucid. . . .[I]t would be hard to find a critic more attentive to both the nuances of fictionality and the subtle interconnections of contemporaneous historical phenomena than Thomas Peyser.” — Nancy Glazener , American Literature
“[Peyser is] a creative reader and an inspired critic.” — William Morgan, Modern Fiction Studies
“[S]harp and provocative . . . . [A]n engaging and interesting piece of work, which offers us an alternative framework for reading American naturalism at the same time as making a timely intervention within current debates about national and transnational cultures.” — Paul Giles , Journal of American Studies
“[T]his is a well-researched, scholarly, and judicious study that demonstrates how well both realism and utopianism reflect a significant period in American, and world, history. It also reminds us that utopias are not simply literary artifacts and that we cannot truly understand them without careful consideration of the social, economic, and political milieu from which they arise.” — Arthur O. Lewis Jr. , Utopian Studies
“Peyser constructs an argument that is convincing in its controlled execution and careful symmetry. The subtlety of the re-readings is such that this work has the tone of an established, seminal study rather than the new critical approach to the period that it is.” — Saranne Weller , European Journal of American Culture
“Thomas Peyser has given us a well-written, intelligent, and timely study of the emergence of globalism and cosmopolitan universalism in turn-of-the-century American literature and culture. . . . [A] lively book with the signal virtue of thinking beyond the pieties of contemporary critical practice.” — Ross Posnock , Modern Philology
“Thomas Peyser has made a valuable contribution to the study of late-nineteenth-and-early-twentieth-century American literature with Utopia and Cosmopolis. . . . His readings are as provocative as they are innovative, and his study provides the basis for a much broader understanding of the relationships between key turn-of-the-century American texts.” — Joseph Csicsila , American Literary Realism
“Peyser’s readings are nuanced and sensitive to both historical context and the specificity of individual works. These readings let us see, without pretentiously announcing it, how an understanding of four authors provides a provocative perspective on current reflections about the effects of globalization on national cultures.” — Brook Thomas, University of California, Irvine
“Specialists in the field will need to engage with this work. . . . Utopia and Cosmopolis wonderfully modifies the basic context in which late nineteenth century American literature must be read.” — Paul Bové, University of Pittsburgh