Kibbutz: Venture in Utopia is the established and standard work on the collective settlement in Israel. The techniques of modern social science are used by Melford Spiro to probe, through one particular example, a way of life that has compelled the attention and grudging admiration of the world. Spiro takes us into one center of a living society. He shows us the daily life, attitudes and problems of a fellowship of people who share a powerful set of convictions: that labor is an end in itself, that what is used and produced by the community belongs to the entire community, that children are best brought up collectively. It is a society com­mitted to the practice of socialist and Zionist ideals.
But there are tensions and conflicts within this "Utopia." "The world" creeps in to challenge loyalties as international alignments change; individuals develop desires for something different: more time alone with the children, a greater degree of privacy, a radio. Men and women, growing older, lose youth's greater capacity for work and, therefore, some of the prestige work brings. - from Amzon