TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 207 Lehigh University: A History ofEducation in Engineering, Business, and the Human Condition. By W. Ross Yates. Bethlehem, Pa., and Cranbury, N.J.: Lehigh University Press and Associated University Presses, 1992. Pp. 334; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $48.50. In the late 19th century, philanthropic industrial magnates like Carnegie, Case, and Wentworth established educational institutions designed to provide American industry with trained technical per sonnel. Lehigh University was one of these. Founded in 1866 by Asa Packer, head of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, Lehigh has numbered among its alumni such distinguished engineers as Morris L. Cooke (1895) and Lee Iacocca (1945). Packer clearly intended the new institution to be some sort of polytechnic institute, but for nearly fifteen years Lehigh struggled to find itself. Grandiose plans for all students to have a common first two years before entering one of five professional schools (general litera ture, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, metallurgy and min ing, or analytical chemistry) never were consummated. Attrition rates were above 50 percent; enrollments were low. The institution flirted with broadening its science base and opening a school of law even while its core area, engineering, struggled. In 1871 Packer rescued the institution by providing funds to make tuition free, a practice continued to 1891. In the 1880s Lehigh reorganized into a dominant “School of Technology” and a smaller and more service-oriented “School of General Literature.” It then settled into what was to become its primary role: an engineering school emphasizing a scientific ap proach to engineering education. It quickly became one of the nation’s leading providers of mining engineers. Tau Beta Pi, the honorary society for engineering students, originated at Lehigh. Lehigh was also one of the first schools to establish a curriculum in metallurgy independent of mining. W. Ross Yates argues that Lehigh’s evolution was “clearly related to the rise and progress of America as an industrial power,” but that this interaction was often most clear at the local level. Lehigh’s evolution near the turn of the century demonstrates this well. The financial difficulties of railroads generally and the Lehigh Valley Railroad particularly meant that the late 1890s were not good for Lehigh. The value of its endowment in Lehigh Valley Railroad stock declined during the long depression that begin in 1893. As a result the school all but eliminated its graduate program and dropped its course in architec ture. By 1900 the nearby Bethlehem Steel Company had replaced the Lehigh Valley Railroad as Lehigh’s industrial patron, reflecting the rise of this industry to prominence both nationally and in the valley. Lehigh’s engineering curriculum by 1900 had become, as Yates describes it, “stable,” “orthodox,” and “resistant to change.” Although 208 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Lehigh faculty were active in the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, they long ignored its recommendations. The school was slow in developing cooperative education and in reintro ducing an effective graduate program. Yates’s narrative indicates that an important factor contributing to Lehigh’s conservatism was its successful alumni. They were key actors throughout much of the school’s history and tended to support the status quo. Yates sees the World War I era as a major watershed. Before World War I, Lehigh was a small, almost personalized school, with a minimal level of administration and often close relationships between trustees, faculty, and students. After World War I, with growing size, Lehigh became increasingly bureaucratic and more burdened with formal regulations. In the 1920s Lehigh worked to reinvigorate its graduate program and increase research, but, says Yates, these efforts had very limited success. Only in 1936 did Lehigh create a graduate school, and only in 1938 did it graduate a Ph.D., its first since the 1890s. As a result, Lehigh was not a major defense contractor in World War II. In the post—World War II era, Lehigh, like many American universities, struggled to transform itself into a research university and attract government contract research. It suffered from underfunding in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but by 1960 had revived. In the late 1950s and early 1960s Lehigh broadened its financial base through improved fund...