Frank G. Novak, Jr. (Ed.). “In Old Friendship”: The Correspondence of Lewis Mumford and Henry A. Murray, 1928–1981. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2007. 447 pp. $59.95 (cloth). ISBN: 0-8156-3113-8

✍ Scribed by Nicole B. Barenbaum

• Book ID: 102340185
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 58 KB
• Volume: 47
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5061
• DOI: 10.1002/jhbs.20498

✦ Synopsis

This book is an edited collection of letters between prolific author and cultural critic Lewis Mumford (1895Mumford ( -1990) ) and physician/biochemist/psychologist Henry A. Murray , whose best-known contributions include the collaborative study of 51 men of college age, Explorations in Personality (Murray, 1938), and the Thematic Apperception Test (Morgan & Murray, 1935). The correspondence between Mumford and Murray began in 1928, sparked by the two men's shared interest in Herman Melville, whose life and work are a frequent topic of their exchanges. Mumford and Murray soon became fast friends, sharing details of their personal lives, commenting with boundless praise and occasional criticism on one another's work, and influencing one another's thoughts and writing.

Frank G. Novak, Jr., the editor of the correspondence, is a professor of English and an expert on the life and work of Mumford (e.g., Novak, 1995). In his introductory essay and his notes on the correspondence, Novak draws on biographies of Mumford (Miller, 1989) and of Murray (Robinson, 1992) and cites many of the works of both men, but it is clear that he is more familiar with Mumford's writings than with Murray's. Unfortunately for historians of psychology, Novak occasionally fails to identify works of Murray that are mentioned in the correspondence and that he might have found in the biography by Robinson (1992) or the bibliography published in the collection of Murray's writings edited by Shneidman (1981), sources he cites frequently. Also, it is not always clear where there are gaps in the correspondence. Novak sometimes says he has not been able to find a missing letter (for example, one that is mentioned in a reply that does appear in the volume), but he does not always make such a note, so readers might wonder whether letters are missing or whether the editor has just decided to omit them. Usually omissions within a letter are indicated but some indication of how much has been omitted would be helpful.

Nevertheless, these are minor problems, and the collection is a valuable resource. Although both Murray's and Mumford's biographers (Miller, 1989;Robinson, 1992) have included a number of quotes from the correspondence, reading the whole series of letters over several decades sheds new light on the relationship between Murray and Mumford and on the contexts in which both men's thought developed. There are even some surprises-for example, Murray's declaration that "Pierce" (i.e., C. S. Peirce, who unfortunately remains unidentified by Novak) is in his view the best American philosopher, a preference that seems to have gone unnoticed so far in comments on Murray's work. Murray mentioned explicitly his identification with William James, but his use of Peirce's concept of evolutionary love in his study of Melville's Pierre has received only passing mention (Robinson, 1992). Murray scholars may find particularly interesting his comments revealing the changes in his worldview associated with his involvement in World War II, when he turned from a focus on individual psychology to world affairs and became increasingly concerned with efforts to counteract the nuclear threat. Murray's critique of American "advertisitis" and commercialism still seem pertinent today.

An interesting personal aspect of the correspondence is the "distancing" that Novak and both biographers (Miller, 1989;Robinson, 1992) describe in connection with Murray's initial