Technology's Crux: AtD days
Monte Davis
monte.davis at bms.com
Mon Apr 2 08:16:23 CDT 2007
There goes the book budget for this month. I'm familiar with Vaclav Smil
primarily as a geo-eco-chemist, tracing global environmental cycling of
nitrogen, carbon, etc. But these two books look irresistible, and would
surely provide lots of grist for any Stencil -- looking into the late
nineteenth century for When it All Went Off the Rails:
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/54755
The review includes a wonderfuil passage from a Henry Adams letter:
"A world so different from that of my childhood or middle-life can't
belong to the same scheme. It shifts from one motive to another, without
sequence. . . . Out of a medieval, primitive, crawling infant of 1838,
to find oneself a howling, steaming, exploding, Marconiing, radiumating,
automobiling maniac of 1904 exceeds belief."
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