Few scholars have so fully grasped the profound connection between exceptionalism, expansionism, and technological evangelism in American history. No one who seeks to understand this country's past, present, or future can afford to ignore this masterful book.

If only I could send two or three thousand choice subjects to a "re-education camp" consisting entirely of a close reading of Adas's Dominance by Design, a sweeping, powerful indictment of American technological hubris from the first European settlers to the Gulf Wars.
— James C. Scott, Yale University

Few scholars have so fully grasped the profound connection between exceptionalism, expansionism, and technological evangelism in American history. No one who seeks to understand this country's past, present, or future can afford to ignore this masterful book.
— Paul N. Edwards, University of Michigan

In this extraordinary, and extraordinarily important, book, Michael Adas not only gives us a fascinating historical overview of American technology but how faith in that technology's power shaped (or tragically misshaped) American religion, fine art, race relations, engineers and engineering, and views of Islam.
— Walter LaFeber, Cornell University

Adas has identified the leitmotif of American empire: not democracy, globalization, or "soft power," but technology. Technology sanctions conquest and justifies projects to reshape the lives, habits, and environments of distant peoples. Adas has given us an arresting, comprehensive narrative that will change the way we think.

— Nick Cullather, Indiana University

Dominance by Design is a wonderful piece of synthesis -- smart, fluent, and wide-ranging. Michael Adas traces the arc of U.S. history and highlights what he calls technocentrism as a major source of American economic, military, and environmental mastery. This argument deserves a readership as broad as the scholarship on which it is based.
— Michael Hunt, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill