| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Michael Adas. Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives and America's Civilizing Mission. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2006. Pp. 542. $29.95.

Michael Adas's book makes a good air traveler's companion. This survey of "U.S. civilizing offenses" situates the paradox of U.S. technological superiority within historical context. While Americans enjoy their position as the world's sole hyperpower, they also face ominous dangers from four-ounce containers of airborne breast milk. As the title suggests, Adas emphasizes "technological imperatives," patterns of thought and action where "progress" and "civilization" are measured in technological terms, both at home and abroad. Surveying four centuries, he evaluates successive imperial struggles, from English dealings with Native Americans to U.S. engagements in Panama, the Philippines, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf. Most intriguing to historians of technology, Adas argues that an entrenched technological positivism underlies all attempts to "civilize" non-Western cultures. He targets the endemic failures of U.S. foreign policy based on the false assumption that superior machines beget and expand superior cultures. At the same time, he reveals that technology operates as material and method; it generates the tools of engagement and the lens through which we interpret the facts. His book is a compelling, well-written indictment of our "techno-hubris" that should be required reading for this and subsequent presidents as well as historians of U.S. culture, politics, and technology.

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