Lewis Mumford

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 913 Lewis Mumford: A Life. By Donald Miller. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989. Pp. xxi + 628; illustrations, notes, index. $24.95. Throughout most of the 20th century, Lewis Mumford (1895— 1990) boldly explored an enormous diversity of ideas and passion­ ately advocated his deeply held moral positions. To write his biogra­ phy requires a willingness to move with Mumford across this broad spectrum. Donald Miller has responded admirably. Mumford did not commission this exhaustive biography, but he did give Miller access to his extensive correspondence—much of which is now available at the University of Pennsylvania—and to private family papers. Lewis, Sophia Mumford, and their daughter, Alison Mumford Morss, also helped Miller piece together the life of a man whom Russell Jacoby has aptly called a public intellectual. Such a person he defines as a thinker and writer who addresses a literate and general audience about questions and issues undefined or categorized by conventional academic or professional disciplines. The result of Miller’s undertak­ ing is an engaging and informative biography providing a remarkably broad and penetrating view of currents running deeply through the 20th century, the technological salient among them. Mumford’s intellectual and personal odyssey, which began in Man­ hattan, lasted for almost a century. From Miller, we learn of the lasting impression made on the young Mumford by the material and intellectual culture of a Manhattan deeply influenced by German and Eastern European immigrants. The metropolis was messy and vital but still nurtured most of its inhabitants. We also follow Mumford as he dedicates himself to the writer’s life, marries Sophia Wittenberg, comes under the influence of Patrick Geddes, the Scottish botanist, sociologist, and town planner whom he called “master,” and involves himself emotionally and intellectually in several affairs, including a particularly intimate one with Catherine Bauer, then embarking on a distinguished career dedicated to the problems of modern housing. The story continues as he achieves international recognition as a pioneer in American studies and in the history of technology, as an immensely influential architectural critic, as a much-consulted advo­ cate of regional development, and as a spokesperson, even prophetic figure, for those deeply troubled about the course of post—World War II science and technology. The biography leaves Mumford—before his death in January 1990—living in the simple farmhouse in the hamlet of Leedsville, Dutchess County, New York, where he and Sophia spent most of their lives together. He was no longer able to write, the commitment that disciplined his life and gave him purpose. Because of the enormous range of interests of this generalist who spoke so disparagingly of specialists, especially academics, reviewers will concentrate on different aspects of this multifaceted book in accord with their own less catholic interests. Many will follow Miller as he highlights Mumford’s books on the city and the articles and 914 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE activities associated with regional planning. He considers The City in History (1961) Mumford’s masterwork. Others will focus on The Golden Day (1926) and Herman Melville (1929). With these two, Mumford helped Van Wyck Brooks establish American literature in the univer­ sity curriculum where a European bias had hitherto prevailed. Readers of Technology and Culture will be particularly interested in what Miller has to say about the incubation, maturation, publication, and evaluation of Technics and Civilization (1934), Technics and Human Development (1967), and The Pentagon of Power (1970). (The last two make up The Myth of the Machine}. Miller reminds us that Patrick Geddes led Mumford in Technics and Civilization to categorize the eras of technological history as eotechnic, paleotechnic, and neotechnic, a scheme that Mumford later charac­ terized as the most original and at the same time the most dubious part of the book. Mumford might well have had doubts about the periodization scheme, structured as it was by the emergence of new technologies. It led willy-nilly to technological determinism, a philos­ ophy that Mumford, the axiologist, generally repudiated. Even in the later pages of Technics and Civilization, he stresses the role of values in shaping technology and its history—but he often contradicts himself. Perhaps he took a page from

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