Books, Arts & Manners: The Machine Profaned

The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol. II)

By Lewis Mumford Harcourt, 496 pp., $12.95 The dean of American culture critics has written another rock ‘em, sock ‘em, doomsday book. All portents indicate popular success. Book-of-the-Month-Clubbers have it selected for them, whereas the New Yorker clientele, who prefer their ideas sandwiched between diverting blandishments from the pentagon of power, have fed on a dehydrated version. The success recipe: Simmer one eschatological theme in the Erasmus mentality, and serve hot in the style of Dante’s Comedy. Mumford continues his attack on “megatechnics” in a series of vignettes of the sins of well-known personalities from Galileo to B. F. Skinner.

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Hiram Caton

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The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol. II)

By Lewis Mumford Harcourt, 496 pp., $12.95 The dean of American culture critics has written another rock ‘em, sock ‘em, doomsday book. All portents indicate popular success. Book-of-the-Month-Clubbers have it selected for them, whereas the New Yorker clientele, who prefer their ideas sandwiched between diverting blandishments from the pentagon of power, have fed on a dehydrated version. The success recipe: Simmer one eschatological theme in the Erasmus mentality, and serve hot in the style of Dante’s Comedy. Mumford continues his attack on “megatechnics” in a series of vignettes of the sins of well-known personalities from Galileo to B. F. Skinner.