Lewis Mumford

The city’s development from ancient times to the modern age. Winner of the National Book Award. “One of the major works of scholarship of the twentieth century” (Christian Science Monitor). Index; illustrations.

Technics and Civilization first presented its compelling history of the machine and critical study of its effects on civilization in 1934—before television, the personal computer, and the Internet even appeared on our periphery. Drawing upon art, science, philosophy, and the history of culture, Lewis Mumford explained the origin of the machine age and traced its social results, asserting that the development of modern technology had its roots in the Middle Ages rather than the Industrial Revolution. Mumford sagely argued that it was the moral, economic, and political choices we made, not the machines that we used, that determined our then industrially driven economy. Equal parts powerful history and polemic criticism, Technics and Civilization was the first comprehensive attempt in English to portray the development of the machine age over the last thousand years—and to predict the pull the technological still holds over us today. “ The questions posed in the first paragraph of Technics and Civilization still deserve our attention, nearly three quarters of a century after they were written.”— Journal of Technology and Culture

Mumford explains the forces that have shaped technology since prehistoric times and shaped the modern world. He shows how tools developed because of significant parallel inventions in ritual, language, and social organization. “It is a stimulating volume, informed both with an enormous range of knowledge and empathetic spirit” (Eliot Fremont-Smith, New York Times). Index; photographs.

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In this concluding volume of The Myth of the Machine, Mumford brings to a head his radical revisions of the stale popular conceptions of human and technological progress. Far from being an attack on science and technics, The Pentagon of Power seeks to establish a more organic social order based on technological resources. Index; photographs.

This offers the first broad treatment of the city in both its historic and its contemporary aspects.

Featuring a new introduction by Casey Nelson Blake, this classic text provides the essence of Mumford's views on the distinct yet interpenetrating roles of technology and the arts in modern culture. Mumford contends that modern man's overemphasis on technics has contributed to the depersonalization and emptiness of much of twentieth-century life. He issues a call for a renewed respect for artistic impulses and achievements. His repeated insistence that technological development take the Human as its measure -- as well as his impassioned plea for humanity to make the most of its "splendid potentialities and promise" and reverse its progress toward anomie and destruction -- is ever more relevant as the new century dawns.

Great classic of American cultural history and important study of American architecture and civilization, still stimulating in its sweep and insights. Discusses the early New England towns, vernacular building, Colonial and Federal periods, Henry Hobson Richardson and other important architects of the late 19th century, the Classical Revival, up to the early 1920s. 21 illus.

L'homme moderne s'est dj dpersonnalis si profondment qu'il n'est plus assez homme pour tenir tte ses machines. L'homme primitif, faisant fond sur la puissance de la magie, avait confiance en sa capacit de diriger les forces naturelles et de les matriser. L'homme post-historique, disposant des immenses ressources de la science, a si peu confiance en lui qu'il est prt accepter son propre remplacement, sa propre extinction, plutt que d'avoir arrter les machines ou mme simplement les faire tourner moindre rgime. En rigeant en absolus les connaissances scientifiques et les inventions techniques, il a transform la puissance matrielle en impuissance humaine : il prfrera commettre un suicide universel en acclrant le cours de l'investigation scientifique plutt que de sauver l'espce humaine en le ralentissant, ne serai-ce que temporairement. Jamais auparavant l'homme n'a t aussi affranchi des contraintes imposes par la nature, mais jamais non plus il n'a t davantage victime de sa propre incapacit dvelopper dans leur plnitude ses traits spcifiquement humains ; dans une certaine mesure, comme je l'ai dj suggr, il a perdu le secret de son humanisation. Le stade extrme du rationalisme posthistorique, nous pouvons le prdire avec certitude, poussera plus loin un paradoxe dj visible : non seulement la vie elle-mme chappe d'autant plus la matrise de l'homme que les moyens de vivre deviennent automatiques, mais encore le produit ultime - l'homme lui-mme - deviendra d'autant plus irrationnel que les mthodes de production se rationaliseront. En bref, le pouvoir et l'ordre, pousss leur comble, se renversent en leur contraire : dsorganisation, violence, aberration mentale, chaos subjectif.

Buried renaissance of Root, Sullivan, Roebling, W. Homer, Eakins, Ryder, others. 12 illustrations.

A collection of essays by the respected social commentator on some problems faced by cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Paris, on the architecture of Saarinen, Le Corbusier, and Wright, and on city and highway planning.

A study of the development of the personality and the community. With a preface by the author. 16 pages of illustrations.

In this study of Herman Melville's life & thought, the author primarily relied on Melville's own writings, including his letters & some of his notebooks. This work is singularly complete in that part of Melville which most matters: his ideas, his feelings, his urges, his vision of life. Wherever possible, the author uses Melville's own language in describing his state of mind & experience. This is a wonderful biography of the man who is considered the greatest imaginative writer that America has produced, not to mention the author of "Moby Dick."

Discusses the ultimated ethical and religious issues the confront modern man and offers a new orientation, directed to the renewal of life and the reintegration of modern civilization.

This volume brings together representative selections of Lewis Mumford's major writings on the central concerns of his life. Praised by Malcolm Cowley as "the last of the great humanists," Mumford (1895-1990) produced a body of cultural criticism and commentary that for its range and richness is unmatched in modern American letters. Author of countless articles and more than thirty books - including the landmark works The Culture of the Cities and The City in History - Mumford is arguably this century's foremost architectural critic. In addition, he shaped some of the most important public policy debates of our time, writing with vigor on such issues as urban development, transportation policy, land planning, the environment, nuclear disarmament, and the problems and promises of technology.

Book by Mumford, Lewis

Le conquiste della tecnica e una certa meccanizzazione dell'esistenza hanno condotto a esaltare la tecnologia come esempio di razionalità perfetta, oggettiva e priva di errore. Ma la ragione della macchina è diversa dalla ragione umana, e pensare che il progresso tecnologico non riguardi anche la sfera spirituale significa aver capito ben poco della ricchezza presente nell'animo di ogni individuo. Soltanto in nome di una ragione liberata da questo equivoco è possibile riappropriarsi della fonte stessa di tale l'amore, l'unico elemento in grado di ricomporre la frattura che ha separato ragione ed emozione e di restituire senso a una tecnologia altrimenti senza scopo e significato. Ed è proprio questa la sfida nella quale, secondo Mumford, si gioca il destino dell'uomo moderno e in definitiva della nostra specie.

Fine Hardcover Harcourt, Brace and 1973. The first edition is stated, 522 pages. "This book does not attempt to condense the twenty-odd volumes that constitute Mr. Mumford lifework. But as near as is humanly possible this book presents the essence of his thought by chosing representative sample. By organizing this material under five dominant themes, Mr. Mumford has in effect produced a new and original book that bears the imprint of his challenging mind." FINE HARDCOVER, FINE DUST JACKET. Hard Cover. Fine/Fine. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.

A collection of twenty-six essays from the New Yorker's "Sky Line" column.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Book by Mumford, Lewis

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

1956. First Edition. 319 pages. No dust jacket. This is an ex-Library book. Brown cloth covered boards with gilt. Ex library copy with associated labels, inserts, stamps and annotations. Pages and binding are presentable with no major defects. Minor issues present such as mild cracking, inscriptions, inserts, light foxing, tanning and thumb marking. Overall a good condition item. Boards have mild shelf wear with light rubbing and corner bumping. Some light marking and sunning.

As a lifelong exponent of regionalism, regional planning, and garden cities, his major contributions are known worldwide. The essays by Mr. Mumford on the subject of City Development. The essays from 1922-1945.

Published in 1940, with Europe already enmeshed in war and the world on the brink of joining in, Faith for Living is an exhortation to find a philosophy of life worth living, and dying, for. Mumford looks warily at the “barbarians” growing in power across the Atlantic, and argues that unless the peoples of free democratic societies wake up from their “comfortable bourgeoisie routine” and revive a “faith for living” — an intrinsic counterargument to the enticements of fascism — the values of classical liberalism will be conquered and vanquished.

"La megamáquina" puede ser comprendida como una inédita "división del trabajo" que el surgimiento de las primeras civilizaciones hace posible; capaz de concetrar y poner en movimiento fuerzas técnicas a gran escala, "de movilizar inmensas multitudes de hombres y coordinar rigurosamente sus actividades, en todo tiempo y lugar, para lograr un fin claramente previsto, calculado y determinado" por una elite. Mumford pretende evidenciar que esta nueva tecnología civilizada, está inevitablemente asociada a la jerarquización de las sociedades neolíticas y aldeanas, es decir, se relaciona a la aparición del aparato estatal y de su burocracia político-religiosa, que sustentó sus privilegios en argumentos mágicos. Es la imposición de un sistema de dominación de clase, y a la vez el aplanamiento cultural y la estandarización de las formas de vida de las diversas sociedades neolíticas y aldenas, pues "este nuevo mecanismo colectivo imponía a todos la misma clase de regimentación general, sobre todos ejercía los mismos modos de coerción y de castigo, y limitaba estrictamente los premios tangibles, reservándolos para la minoría dominante, que era quien creaba y dirgía la megamáquina

Although Lewis Mumford is widely acknowledged as the seminal American critic of architecture and urbanism in the twentieth century, he is less known for his art criticism. He began contributing to this field in the early 1920s, and his influence peaked between 1932 and 1937, when he was art critic for the New Yorker. This book, for the first time, assembles Mumford's important art criticism in a single volume. His columns bring wit and insight to bear on a range of artists, from establishment figures like Matisse and Brancusi to relatively new arrivals like Reginald Marsh and Georgia O'Keeffe. These articles provide an unusual window onto the New York art scene just as it was casting off provincialism in favor of a more international outlook. On a deeper level, the columns probe beneath the surface of modern art, revealing an alienation that Mumford believed symptomatic of a larger cultural disintegration.Many of the themes Mumford addresses overlap with those of his more familiar architectural the guiding role of the past in stimulating creativity in the present, the increasing congestion of the modern metropolis, the alarming lack of human control over modern technology, and the pressing need to restore organic balance to everyday living. Though he was open to new movements emanating from Europe, Mumford became the chief advocate of a progressive American modernism that was both socially aware and formally inventive.

Ce texte de Lewis Mumford de 1956, inédit en français, retrace l'histoire environnementale des villes et plus généralement de l'urbanisation, depuis leur apparition au Néolithique jusqu'aux mégalopoles du xxe siècle, en passant par les cités grecques, les villes médiévales et industrielles. Inspirée par George Perkins Marsh (auteur en 1864 de Man and Nature), cette analyse du fait urbain se veut écologique : en quoi l'urbanisation modifie-t-elle l'environnement, transforme-t-elle les paysages et reconfigure-t-elle les territoires ? Il y est ainsi question des relations villes/campagnes et de la bonne taille des villes.

"A broad program for maintaining democracy and civilization in the United States". An intelligent discussion of the choice between militant anti-fascism and tolerant pacifism during the crucial period that lead up to the Second World War.