Lewis Mumford

(1895 - 1990)

Lewis Mumford took classes at, but never received a degree from, Columbia University and the New School for Social Research, among other schools. After serving in the U.S. Navy from 1918 to 1919 and working on the staff of The Dial, he published his first book, The Story of Utopias, in 1922. In the 1940s and 1950s Mumford publicly opposed various urban plans proposed for New York City by Robert Moses. His best-known work, The City in History, received a National Book Award in 1962.

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Man’s great mission is not to conquer nature by main force but to cooperate with her intelligently but lovingly for his own purposes.

—Lewis Mumford, 1962

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