For Us, The Living

Heinlein's "For Us, The Living" deserves praise, a close reading and a better audience. The book is a marvel. It was his first novel and was never published until long after the author's death. Originally written in 1939, it was not published until late November 2003. I wish he published it in 1939. Perhaps our society would be very different if there was one more "banned" book in the world.
The book is about a man who dies in 1939 and awakes in 2086. From that point, the reader is presented with an in-depth, sometimes almost too deep, view of the future as seen through 1939 eyes. The future is quite a different time. Aside from the vastly different economics of the era, which I don't claim to understand fully, the world is culturally upside-down. I mean that it is entirely different, not that it is wrong in any way.
Heinlein's societal view of the future is more forward-thinking than that of the authors of today. He presents us with a world in which the society as a whole dumped the morals, ethics and taboos and began anew. Privacy is of the highest importance. Marriage is an entirely private institution, completely separate and un-necessary in the eyes of the law. Anything done without harm to yourself or your fellow citizens is legal and not of anyone's business. The society as a whole and its individual citizens understand that morals and taboos are completely subjective ideas bound to a particular place, time and culture. The "time traveler's" own concept of the world are not only shown to be ridiculous and entirely out of place, but almost dangerous. Heinlein sees, even then, that jealousy is a disease and that a perfectly adjusted person would not feel it.
The book is not so much an exploration of the future as a look at the current (the past, for us). Heinlein took the old principle of explaining our messed up world to a Martian (try telling one what Halloween is) and shows that our world would not stand up to scrutiny by another human, be it from another time (as the characters in the novel) or the same era (the author).
This book would surely have been banned, had it been published in 1939. Aside from tossing to the wind most of the morals, ethics, taboos and laws of the time, Heinlein explores concepts that even now would disgust the average American Conservative. Though, honestly, does that take much? Of course, if it were to be banned or burned in effigy, that would only act to raise its popularity. Nothing screams "Read Me!" quite like a notice from the local church, PTA or "Wives With Knives" club that the book is evil.

On a final note, aside from reading this book, you ought to do a Google image search for "wives with knives". It's a picture I haven't seen until now, and I have to say, it's pretty much what I expected.