"the emerald city of oz" contains more material on the social organization of oz than most of the earlier books, and as a consequence has attracted commentary on its utopian aspects. the "explicitly socialist" economy of oz has been contrasted to other "fantasy" projections of socialist societies, like edward bellamy's "looking backward" (1888) and william morris's "news from nowhere" (1890). how far such analyses and comparisons should be pursued is, of course, open to debate; as baum writes of the social structure of oz in chapter three, p. 31, "i do not suppose such an arrangement would be practical with us..."