Lewis Mumford: Public Intellectual - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 019506173X ISBN 13: 9780195061734

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1990

Synopsis

This collection of essays by leading scholars explores the numerous and brilliant facets of Lewis Mumford's insights into technology and modern culture. Characterized as one of the last of the American public intellectuals, Mumford has written extensively about those issues and problems that are most challenging and troubling for modern society. His Technics and Civilization (1934) and the two-volume The Myth of the Machine (1967 and 1970) still provide an agenda for discussion of technology and culture. Mumford foresightedly warned against simplistic technological determinism by exploring the ways in which values shape technology. He is generally recognized as a seminal figure who laid the foundations for the fields of American Studies and the History of Technology. This compelling portrait of Mumford, written in an accessible style, and exploring highly controversial, timely issues, makes a substantial contribution to the rapidly growing interest in the interaction of technology and culture, and is must reading for students of the history and sociology of science and technology, American studies, and American intellectual and cultural history.

About this title

Synopsis:

This book represents an analysis of the career and ideas of an American intellectual whose interests and activities have spanned various fields of inquiry. Mumford was a critic of nuclear energy, a gadfly of urban planning and design movements, and the catalyst behind academic programmes in city planning, American studies, and the history of technology. This volume contains essays by 16 distinguished contributors in various academic fields.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 019506173X
• ISBN 13: 9780195061734
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 450
• Editor: Thomas P. Hughes & Agatha C. Hughes