Lewis Mumford: A Life by Donald L. Miller

Lewis Mumford: A Life Reviews

• 
  Jim

  A sprawling biography of one of the 20th century's great humanists and one of its last men of letters. All told, Mumford penned 30 books over a span of nearly 60 years, completing his final work in 1981 at the age of 86.
  
  Additionally, he wrote over 1,000 essays and reviews, many of them for The New Yorker, writing frequent essays beginning in the 1930s and later, serving as the prominent literary magazine's architecture critic during the 1950s, when Mumford became an increasingly vocal critic of Robert Moses, New York City's "master builder," and the man most responsible for the city's current maze of roadways and high rises. Mumford, who wrote extensively on the urban environment, with his book, "The City in History," arguably the greatest work on cities ever written, took issue with much of Moses and his development theories for cities.
  
  Miller, a gifted writer in his own right, covers history and the life of Mumford in a fashion that reads more like a novel than a thorough work on a major American figure. Miller, in addition to being a gifted historian, is also a screenwriter and serves as a historical consultant for HBO on several of their series related to history, like WWII in HD, based on Miller's own book, Masters of Air. Miller serves as the John Henry McCracken Professor of History at Lafayette College.
  
  Mumford came to my attention while reading the writing of Neil Postman in the 1990s. Postman's concerns about how technology, with its many promises and frequent disappointments cited Mumford numerous times. Because of this, I tackled The Culture of Cities, which Mumford wrote in 1938. The book had a profound influence on me, framing much of what I now hold to be true about how environments affect people living in the midst of those environments. The ability and need to "humanize" environments, while focused on Mumford's treatment of urban environments, by extension, also extends to technological environments. Never has this been more relevant than at our present technological juncture.
  
  While Miller's book required nearly a month's investment of reading time, I'm glad I tackled this book and biography of a truly profound thinker and a man that modeled what true intellectual depth consists of.
• 
  Cat

  Should you feel compelled to read 500 odd pages on the life of Mumford, this is the book for you.
  
  Ample coverage of his writing and personal life. He was a bit of a jerk to his long suffering wife, but who am I to judge?
  
  The parts on his writing serve as a useful guide to his voluminous writing.
  
  Would have liked more on his relationship with Frank Lloyd Wright.
  
• 
  Lloyd Masel

  The true mark of a fine man is so well depicted by Donald Miller in this excellent biography.