This examination of American novels from 1900 to 1940 traces the literary treatment of the technological sublime, a simultaneous awe and fear of technology. The

American historical writing has traditionally been one of our primary forms of moral reflection. However, David Harlan argues that in the disillusionment follow

Why America Failed shows how, from its birth as a nation of "hustlers" to its collapse as an empire, the tools of the country's expansion proved to be the instr