John U. Nef – författare

"This is in many respects perhaps the most important book that has been published recently. Its intellectual integrity, its humane pathos, its analytical force are exceptional. The title gives only an inadequate indication of the contents; it is at the same time an economic, technological, and cultural history of the rise of industrial civilization. This history is focused on the interconnection between war and industrial and technological progress—a single-mindedness of purpose which breaks through the well-established framework of traditional historiography and opens new insights into the period." —Herbert Marcuse, The American Historical Review

Four hundred years ago the pattern of human life and thought was strikingly different from our own. What main features led to the change in that pattern? Professor Nef, a distinguished historian, suggests that economic history cannot alone give the answer: it must be in terms of changing attitudes and interests as much as in terms of a developing economy and a growing technology. The origins of industrialism have to be sought in history as a whole. Man's concern for truth, goodness and beauty has done as much to produce the modern world as economic institutions and natural resources. Professor Nef has it in mind that, for a historian, the importance of human nature cannot be made subservient to that of productivity statistics; in this book he portrays the birth and development of our industrial civilisation in a clearer light. The book is developed from the second series of Wiles lectures given at Queen's University, Belfast and is a successor to Man on his Past by Herbert Butterfield.