Utopia Americana is a 1929 critical essay on the Oz literature, written by Edward Wagenknecht. It was the earliest serious consideration of Oz by a literary scholar. Wagenknecht's essay was published in a 40-page booklet by the University of Washington bookstore in Seattle. At the time Wagenknecht was a doctoral candidate at the University. "Yet the utopian element in them is strong, and if the children do not forget it all by the time they grow up, perhaps it is not too fantastic to imagine that it may do some good."