Machine-Age Ideology: Social Engineering and American Liberalism, 1911-1939

In this interdisciplinary work, John Jordan traces the significant influence on American politics of a most unlikely hero: the professional engineer. Jordan shows how technical triumphs — bridges, radio broadcasting, airplanes, automobiles, skyscrapers, and electrical power — inspired social and political reformers to borrow the language and logic of engineering in the early twentieth century, bringing terms like efficiency, technocracy, and social engineering into the political lexicon. De...