Customer Reviews

A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium

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" Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a pathway to your door" Emerson wrote. The distinguished historian of American Civilization Daniel Boorstin believed that the heart of the American uniqueness was precisely in those improvements in material life, those accumulated advantages in creature comforts. Now Robert Friedel has come to lavishly illustrate for us the idea that the ' culture of improvement' is what Western civilization through its technology has been over the past millenium.
Friedel traces innovation by innovation the historical development of a whole host of technologies. From cheese -making to supersonic aircraft we learn how certain technologies 'take off' and others lose their way in the shuffle of social events. We see too how time and again key individuals have been responsible for breakthrough developments which move mankind forward.
Friedel is well aware that the development of Western technology is not a one- sided altogether positive story. The weapons of mass - destruction that threaten mankind, and a wide range of threats to the earth itself come in part as result of technological developments.
Still overall there is the sense that human life and society have tremendously benefited by the creative innovative powers of Western technological culture.
This is a very rich work from which a tremendous amount can be learned not only about the development of specific innovations- but about the overall progress of society through them.

This book is such a treasure trove . . . A thrilling read of constant discovery.
We live in a complicated world and this amazing piece of scholarship reveals how it came about. Everything we take for granted. How it happened. From the plough to the microchip, I was constantly surprised and excited to discover how things really came to pass. The story of so many individuals' struggles to improve and innovate is inspiring.
This is a big book. When I began I had no idea of what riches it would be reveal. (the eBook version is easier to handle) but every pages offers new insights. A great and absorbing read.

Several years ago, the education channel in our town had a show called "Connections" in which the story was told of how common things of the modern world came to be through the most fantastic journey of inventions. This book encompasses just about everything we have today and tells how it all came to be. But, the author goes to the extreme of telling not just aobut the inventors, the tinkerers and the capitalists who profited from them, it tells the intriguing human side of technology and how it impacted the lives of the people who benefited and also suffered because of them. It is a remarkably detailed adventure through the history of how modern people came to be. I found it to be a book I could hardly put down and once I did, I was eager to get back to it. It takes the reader from the first black smiths to the super sonic transport, from the invention of thread and yarn making to the launching of satellites. It is the remarkable story of western civilizations, north of the Mediterranean, west of the Volga, and how they advanced steadily, relentlessly and with ever quickening pace to make the world we know. Do not expect gratuitous recognitions to other cultures or apologies to nature or to overtaken primitive societies. This is a factual, no-holds-barred history of industry and how the European men and women made things that made things happen. It explores ruthlessly the insanely driven mechanics, the dusty masons, the sooty handed artisans who were there at the first laying of the foundation corner stone of western civilization. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to find out just how it is we arrived here and now.

I took a class with the professor who wrote the book and I still (2 years later) use the book as a reference. Very well written and researched!