"Hughes writes with sweep and detail. He links diverse phenomena like the military-industrial complex and modern art and architecture with his overall vision that order and control were the inevitable result of technological progress. His is an epic tale told with a rhythm and cadence that match it."

Lee Dembart | Los Angeles Times

"Immensely valuable."

Jonathan Yardley | Washington Post

"To be sure, readers who don’t look for theoretical argument in history books won’t regret its absence in American Genesis. They will enjoy, as I did, its informative accounts of major inventors and organizers--Henry Ford and Frederick Taylor as well as Edison, but most of all Elmer Sperry, the inventor not only of the gyroscope but also of many automatic control systems."

David Joravsky | New York Review of Books

"Masterful and stimulating. . . . It is Hughes’s mastery of the history of technology that distinguishes this book from previous efforts to depict history as technology . . . Many people have deplored the lack of a single volume giving a coherent, well-written account of what has been learned since 1970 about the role of technology in American history since 1870. Thomas Hughes has done something about it."

George Wise | Science