The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America

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Leo Marx

Oxford University Press, New York, 2000; originally published 1964, English

Nonfiction, General

ISBN: 9780195133516

From the Publisher. For over four decades, Leo Marx's work has focused on the relationship between technology and culture in 19th- and 20th-century America. His research helped to define—and continues to give depth to—the area of American studies concerned with the links between scientific and technological advances, and the way society and culture both determine these links. The Machine in the Garden fully examines the difference between the "pastoral" and "progressive" ideals which characterized early 19th-century American culture, and which ultimately evolved into the basis for much of the environmental and nuclear debates of contemporary society.

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Jeanne Gang

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Using the lens of art and literature, this book illuminates the conflicted identity of America as a pastoral utopia versus an industrial giant. While literary criticism is often left behind after grad school, Marx’s book—through its astute and useful observations based on centuries of serious writing—has maintained a very long shelf life for me.

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