Pentagon of Power

by Lewis Mumford

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151639744
• ISBN13: 9780151639748
• Release Date: January 1970
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P
• Length: 506 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Prophetic piece of work?

A truely brilliant piece of work. A must read, almost as prophetic as Huxley's "Brave new world".

Rage Against the Mega-Machine

Nobody writes like this anymore. I hadn't expected the eminent urban historian to write such a brilliant paranoiac tract against the System and Established Order. Although often redundant, Mumford makes a heroic attempt at explaining the current problems of our times, with roots in the Middle Ages, and perhaps even the Age of the Pyramids. He echoes contempories like Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm and Marshall McLuhan, but instead of taking a Marxist, psychological or media perspective, he takes the more general view of an urbanist. The arguments are quite paralell, although considerably more holistic at times. One recognizes critiques that were earlier or later articulated by not only Marxists, but also feminists, environmentalists, and anti-Imperialists. There are also anticipations of the New Age Movement! (See Fitjof Capra's "the Turning Point.")In short, this massive volume impressively combines much historical and cultural material in its critique of Modern Western Civilization. Although the tone of the book is quite bleak -- we would all appear to be trapped in this Megamachine, the High Technology of the Power Elites -- one also senses a hope towards last chapters that an alternative is possible. He seems to suggest a New Age style withdrawal, rather than any kind of organized resistance. Draw your own conclusions.

A damn good read

I can't really be bothered to say much. Basically, if this sort of subject is the kind of thing that appeals to you then I suppose you should read it. If you really want to.