Best Selling Books by Lewis Mumford

Covers the city''s development from ancient times to the modern age.

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

Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) is best known for his Sky Line column in the New Yorker where he served as architecture critic for over 30 years. A man of letters and part of Manhattan''s intellectual elite, Mumford wrote more than 20 books over 6 decades, bridging the seemingly disparate disciplines of architecture, technology, literary criticism, biography, sociology and philosophy.

A classic work advocating ecological urban planning—from a civic visionary and former architecture critic for the New Yorker. Considered among the greatest works of Lewis Mumford—a prolific historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and longtime architecture critic for the New Yorker—The Culture of Cities is a call for communal action to "rebuild the urban world on a sounder human foundation." First published in 1938, this radical investigation into the human environment is based on firsthand surveys of North American and European locales, as well as extensive historical and technological research. Mumford takes readers from the compact, worker-friendly streets of medieval hamlets to the symmetrical neoclassical avenues of Renaissance cities. He studies the squalor of nineteenth-century factory towns and speculates on the fate of the booming twentieth-century Megalopolis—whose impossible scale, Mumford believes, can only lead to its collapse into a "Nekropolis," a monstrosity of living death. A civic visionary, Mumford is credited with some of the earliest proposals for ecological urban planning and the appropriate use of technology to create balanced living environments. In the final chapters of The Culture of Cities, he outlines possible paths toward utopian future cities that could be free of the stressors of the Megalopolis, in sync with the rhythms of daily life, powered by clean energy, integrated with agricultural regions, and full of honest and comfortable housing for the working class. The principles set forth by these visions, once applied to Nazi-occupied Europe''s razed cities, are still relevant today as technological advances and overpopulation change the nature of urban life.

Their 160 letters from 1926-1958 covered a wide range of topics, including Wright''s position on the history of American architecture and contemporary practice, their friends and rivals, the invention and spread of the International Style, and political events in Europe and the United States.".

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

"Superbly crafted little essays, Lewis Mumford''s New Yorker pieces called ''The Art Galleries'' well deserve this handsome republication. They offer supremely tasteful guided tours of the galleries and museums of Manhattan at the time when the canon of Western art, including modernism, was being secured, against a background of tension between abstraction and realism and between aestheticism and social commitment. The essays are a gift for our own troubled times from one of the great humane and versatile critics of the twentieth century; they offer the reassurance of urbanity, poise, and commitment to art as a primary social necessity."—Alan Trachtenberg, Neil Grey Emeritus Professor of English, Yale University

This early work is the first book written by the American historian, philosopher, literary critic and humanist, Lewis Mumford. In The Story of Utopias, Mumford deals with The New Age, socialism, social sciences, mysticism and utopia. 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.

Lewis Mumford was the author of more than thirty influential books, many of which expounded his views on the perils of urban sprawl and a society obsessed with technics. This text provides the essence of Mumford''s views on the distinct yet interpenetrating roles of technology and the arts in modern culture.

A classic of American cultural history, Sticks and Stones is a discussion of early New England towns, Colonial and Federal architectural periods, and various important 19th-century architects like Henry Hobson Richardson. You will enjoy learning about the architecture making up some of the most beautiful towns in the United States.

A study of the development of the personality and the community.

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Revealing a new side of Mumford''s remarkable personality - his formative years, this volume records how he grew up in New York City in the early 20th century, reminisces about his German extended family, his life as a penurious student, his early struggles as a writer in Greenwich Village and the events and people that shaped his thinking.

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 was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. 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.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

"''The Lewis Mumford/David Liebovitz Letters'' will delight anyone who likes to observe the interplay of mind and spirit between intelligent and cultivated people. The civilized intercourse reflected here is a refreshing antidote to the grinding pettiness of much of daily life. . . . Professor Knapp has done lovers of civilized discourse a real service by compiling these letters. Through her work, the reader may witness the profound communication of two lively and thoughtful men."THE ROUND TABLE OF THE SOUTH CENTRAL COLLEGE ENGLISH ASSOCIATION