Pentagon of Power
About this title:
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.
The Conduct of Life
About this title:
Discusses the ultimate 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.
Technics and Civilization
About this title:
This is a history of the machine and a critical study of
its effects on civilization. Mumford has drawn on every
aspect of life to explain the machine and to trace its
social results.
The Condition of Man
About this title:
This is the third volume in Lewis Mumford's superb
"Renewal of Life" series, which also contains Technics
and Civilization, The Culture of Cities, and The Conduct
of Life. The present book explores the historic
development of the personality and the community.
Ranging from ancient Greece to our own century, the
author takes Western man over the ground of his past,
singles out events that have done him injury, and
reveals his latent sources of creative action, too long
thrust aside in an age that depends for salvation on the
machine. Since the original publication of this book,
Lewis Mumford observes in his new Preface, his analysis
of the weaknesses of modern civilization has been
confirmed: the condition of man has worsened; "What were
once only local demoralizations or disasters now
threaten to turn into planetary calamities." Despite
this bleak prospect, the author shuns the philosophies
of anti-life made fashionable by the nihilists, the
existentialists, and the "brutalists," and, as in all
his work, stresses instead an essentially hopeful view
of man's nature and the possibilities for human
development.
The Culture of Cities
About this title:
This offers the first broad treatment of the city in
both its historic and its contemporary aspects. "For
distinction, entertainment, information, scholarship,
and general human interest [this] is one of the most
distinguished books" (Forum).
Art & Technics
About this title:
Featuring a new introduction by Casey Nelson Blake, this
classic text provides the essence of Mumfords views on
the distinct yet interpenetrating roles of technology
and the arts in modern culture. Mumford contends that
modern mans 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.
The Story of Utopias
About this title:
Utopia has long been another name for the unreal and the
impossible. We have set utopia over against the world.
As a matter of fact, it is our utopias that make the
world tolerable to us: the cities and mansions that make
people dream of are those in which they finally live.
The more that men react upon their environment and make
it over after a human pattern, the more continuously do
they live in utopia; but when there is a breach between
the world of affairs and the over world of utopia, we
become conscious of the part that the will-to-utopia has
played in our lives and we see our utopia as a separate
reality.
Sticks and Stones
About this title:
Classic of American cultural history; architecture from
medieval-inspired earliest forms to 20th century. 21
illus.
