The Lewis Mumford Reader ed. by Donald L. Miller

Abstract

Book Reviews The Lewis Mumford Reader. Edited by Donald L. Miller. New York: Pantheon, 1986. Pp. vii + 391; sources, index. $23.95 (cloth); $14.95 (paper). When Lewis Mumford published The Pentagon of Power in 1970, longtime admirers of his literary work wondered what had happened to the man. Seemingly the passionate but keen cultural observer had turned into an obsessed prophet of doom. In the last few years, how­ ever, Mumford’s literary reputation has enjoyed a healthy revival. Mumford helped generate his own renascence with the publication of the first delightful installments of his autobiography. Other signs of revival include a recent series of conferences on Mumford’s work sponsored by history of science and technology departments, includ­ ing the one at the University of Pennsylvania reported on in this issue. While city planners and architects had apparently never lost sight of their debts to Mumford, it seems that historians of technology are just rediscovering one of their true pioneers. Although not a historian of technology, Donald Miller, Mumford’s official biographer, has been a key instigator of the Mumford revival. This reader gives us a taste of delights to come in his forthcoming biography. Miller’s book consists of selections from Mumford’s books, articles, and public lectures dating from the beginning of his writing career to 1982. In an effort to give form to Mumford’s developing thought, Miller organizes his reader thematically rather than chrono­ logically. After beginning with autobiographical excerpts on Mum­ ford’s New York childhood, he samples four major areas of intellectual contribution: architectural criticism, city and regional planning, urban history, and, finally, technology and culture. Miller provides useful introductions to each section, informed by a unique knowledge of Mumford’s voluminous writings, both published (more than thirty books and countless articles) and unpublished. As Mumford’s literary executor, Miller is apparently the only scholar to enjoy full access to his manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania, Mumford’s home in Amenia, New York, and elsewhere. A scholar of American civilization and American studies, of which Mumford was a progenitor, Miller strives to present not the founder of separate new disciplines but the multidisciplinary man of letters who defied and scorned specialized boundaries of any sort. His prin­ ciples of selection are twofold: to represent Mumford’s intellectual Permission to reprint a book review in this section may be obtained only from the reviewer. 128 TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 129 range and to delineate essential themes. There is no secret to the latter, for virtually everything written by Mumford hammers home themes ofantimechanization, organicism, the renewal of the life spirit, and the balanced life. In general, Miller covers the bases pretty well. It is perhaps the devotees of American studies who will find this reader most stimu­ lating and useful in their teaching. Historians of technology, however, may be somewhat disappointed by the scant attention paid to Mum­ ford’s contributions to their held. Of course, in a sense Mumford was not a historian of technology at all—he was a philosopher, moralist, and sometime prophet. Obviously, he has become many things to many people. Miller considers Mumford to be best known “as a writer on cities and architecture” (p. 7) and shifts the balance accordingly. But best known to whom? The many students who over the years have been assigned Technics and Civilization in their engineering or history classes may constitute a silent majority. In any case, selections from Mumford’s major writings in the history of technology—including Art and Technics and the two volumes of The Myth of the Machine,—are limited to the last section of the volume. Yet, Miller has whetted our appetite for insight into the origins of Mumford’s interest in technological history. What clearly emerges from the selections on architecture, urban history, and literary criti­ cism is a lifelong preoccupation with the machine in civilization, re­ flecting the Machine-Age backdrop to Mumford’s intellectual development. Technics and Civilization (1934) represented not a begin­ ning but a culmination of ideas nurtured in the literary and cultural explorations of the 1920s. Omitted in Miller’s volume but especially revealing of Mumford the protohistorian of...