A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium (Hardcover)

by Robert Friedel (Author)
Key Phrases: improving knowledge, atlantic cable, cathedral crusade, United States, Middle Ages, World War (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"...[T]his book is also a rare, detailed, nontheoretical survey that exposes the veins of invention that run through Western culture, creating an astonishing picture of achievement through its careful accumulation of small details. Mr. Friedel surveys the kinds of inventions and technologies that developed in the West over centuries, compiling a roster of innovation that encompasses everything from textiles to time telling. Under his firm touch it begins to be possible to feel something like the primal pulse of this culture."
— Edward Rothstein, The New York Times

"By virtue of its range, quality, length (nearly 600 pages) and comprehensiveness, Robert Friedel's book will go to the top of the list as the standard text for an introductory Charlemagne-to-George-Bush course on the history of technology."
— Times Higher Education Supplement

"From steam engines to calico printing, from cheesemaking to supersonic flight, this is the one place to go if you are fascinated by technology and want to know how it has shaped the modern world. In The Culture of Improvement, Robert Friedel has elegantly synthesized decades of scholarly research in the history of technology into a lively and insightful account of modernity."
—Ruth Schwartz Cowan, Janice and Julian Bers Professor of the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, author of The Social History of American Technology

"This is a splendid book, recalling Mumford's Technics and Civilization in its scope and erudition. It challenges us to think carefully about the idea of progress, the 'culture of improvement,' and the uneasy relationship that persists between freedom, power, and social responsibility in the modern technological world."
—Merritt Roe Smith, Cutten Professor of the History of Technology, MIT

"[Robert Friedel] can not only impart the lesser-known details of a familiar story but masterfully show how strange and wonderful it is that things happened the way they did."
— Wall Street Journal

Product Description
Finalist, 2008 Henry Paolucci / Walter Bagehot Book Award given by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

Why does technology change over time, how does it change, and what difference does it make? In this sweeping, ambitious look at a thousand years of Western experience, Robert Friedel argues that technological change comes largely through the pursuit of improvement—the deep-rooted belief that things could be done in a better way. What Friedel calls the "culture of improvement" is manifested every day in the ways people carry out their tasks in life—from tilling fields and raising children to waging war.

Improvements can be ephemeral or lasting, and one person’s improvement may not always be viewed as such by others. Friedel stresses the social processes by which we define what improvements are and decide which improvements will last and which will not. These processes, he emphasizes, have created both winners and losers in history.

Friedel presents a series of narratives of Western technology that begin in the eleventh century and stretch into the twenty-first. Familiar figures from the history of invention are joined by others—the Italian preacher who described the first eyeglasses, the dairywomen displaced from their control over cheesemaking, and the little-known engineer who first suggested a grand tower to Gustav Eiffel. Friedel traces technology from the plow and the printing press to the internal combustion engine, the transistor, and the space shuttle. Friedel also reminds us that faith in improvement can sometimes have horrific consequences: improved weaponry makes warfare ever more deadly and the drive for improving human beings can lead to eugenics and even genocide. The most comprehensive attempt to tell the story of Western technology in many years, engagingly written and lavishly illustrated, A Culture of Improvement documents the ways in which the drive for improvement has shaped our modern world.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; 1 edition (May 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262062623
• ISBN-13: 978-0262062626
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 8.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #348,786 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The better mousetrap , May 20, 2007

By	Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

" 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.