Book description
In this concluding volume of The Myth of the Machine, Mumford brings to a head his radical revisions of the stale popular conceptions of human and technological progress. Far from being an attack on science and technics, The Pentagon of Power seeks to establish a more organic social order based…
Why read it?
1 author picked The Pentagon of Power as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Like so much else Mumford wrote, this book is a volcano of provocative ideas that I found revelatory when I first read it and still do. Published in 1970, it summarizes much of Mumford’s thinking about the largely invisible and growing power structure he calls the Megamachine that threatens humanity and life on planet Earth.
His earlier writing, including The City in History (1961) and his essay The Natural History of Urbanization (1956), was formative for my own thinking about urban parasitism and aggression. Although a lover of cities, as am I, Mumford was well aware of the consequences of…
From Gray's list on the hidden costs of city-building.
If you love The Pentagon of Power...
The High House
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
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