FDR's Utopian

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 139 grander and more general solution is required. Our technology must be embedded in a scheme of things firm enough to control our tech­ nical operations and direct them to civilizing ends. To discover how to create a culture that “weds competence to grace and wisdom to know-how” is the task at hand (p. xii). Florman has been around long enough to know that the kind of union he seeks will not be produced by the force of tradition or the natural attraction of opposites. We will consciously have to work at finding the appropriate fit of things to order and contain our expanding technological skills and energies. In putting forward his ideas, Florman covers a lot of ground, makes many shrewd observations, and offers a bundle of constructive sug­ gestions. In dealing with such a complex and problematic topic, he may propose some remedies on which not all will agree. He may, not surprisingly, overemphasize the contribution “civilized engineers” can make in the process he has in mind. And—again not surprisingly— he may seem to suggest that an appropriate civilizing culture for us at the present time is almost exactly like the one he discovered at Columbia in the thrilling days of Krutch, Trilling, Barzun, Van Doren, et al. Along the way, in other words, he has presented us with some material for further enlightening discussion that in no way will modify the force of his principal conclusion. That conclusion is, colloquially: What the machinery does to you depends directly on how clearly you know what to use it for. Elting Morison Dr. Morison is the author of' From Kaoie-Hoiv to Nowhere and Admiral Sims and the Modern American Navy. FDR’s Utopian: Arthur Morgan of the TVA. By Roy Talbert, Jr. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1987. Pp. xiv + 218; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $25.00. This appears to be the first scholarly biography of Arthur E. Mor­ gan (1878-1975), engineer and reformer. Roy Talbert interviewed Morgan extensively and also used manuscripts and secondary works for a narrative centered on his subject’s tenure as first chair of the three-person board of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Lacking formal education beyond high school, the young Morgan developed for himselfa faith in science, along with a demanding moral code and “a kind of perfectionism buttressed by the scientific method, Christian Socialism for a technological society” (p. 17). Talbert cate­ gorizes him as an “archetypal progressive” who was at the same time an antipolitical utopian (p. xiii). With little technical training, Morgan nevertheless rose rapidly as a hydraulic engineer, especially as director of a major flood control project in Ohio, the Miami Conservancy. In 1921, however, he left engineering to become president of struggling 140 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Antioch College. Instituting a distinctive work-study curriculum, he set the college on its feet, but, to his disappointment, could not mold it into the ideal community of his dreams. In 1933, President Roo­ sevelt’s call to head the TVA seemed to open a magnificent oppor­ tunity: to plan for the entire watershed of the Tennessee River. Over half the book is devoted to the TVA period, from June 1933 to March 1938. According to Talbert, “the initial success of the TVA can be traced directly to the work of Arthur Morgan” (p. 106). As engineer and planner, Morgan organized the construction of dams and of the model town of Norris, initiated reform of land use, and promoted producers’ cooperatives. The TVA Act, as he understood it, directed the authority to apply technology to the repair of envi­ ronmental and social damage, to reinvigorate the small town, and to create a new social order. In this vision, hydropower played a subsidiary part; but board mem­ ber David Lilienthal believed that TVA’s most urgent task was to pro­ vide cheap electricity, and that it must act promptly to counteract the inevitable opposition of the utility corporations. When Lilienthal pro­ posed that TVA should initiate its own power policy, the chairman in­ sisted that it must, instead, negotiate “openly and fairly” with the industry, notably with Wendell Willkie’s Commonwealth and

Aesthetics · Art · Constructive · Epistemology · Harmony (color) · Process (computing) · Sociology · Visual arts · American Environmental and Regional History · Computer Science · Military History and Strategy · Philosophy · Research, Science, and Academia