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Merritt Roe Smith

Merritt Roe Smith is Cutten Professor of the History of Technology at MIT and the author or editor of six books, most recently Inventing America: A History of the United States.

Titles by This Author

Does Technology Drive History?

The Dilemma of Technological Determinism
By Leo Marx and Merritt Roe Smith
Edited by Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx


These thirteen essays explore a crucial historical question that has been notoriously hard to pin down: To what extent, and by what means, does a society's technology determine its political, social, economic, and cultural forms?

Titles by This Editor

Reconceptualizing the Industrial Revolution

Edited by Jeff Horn, Leonard N Rosenband and Merritt Roe Smith

This collection of essays offers new perspectives on the Industrial Revolution as a global phenomenon. The fifteen contributors go beyond the longstanding view of industrialization as a linear process marked by discrete stages. Instead, they examine a lengthy and creative period in the history of industrialization, 1750 to 1914, reassessing the nature of and explanations for England's industrial primacy, and comparing significant industrial developments in countries ranging from China to Brazil.

Does Technology Drive History?

The Dilemma of Technological Determinism
By Leo Marx and Merritt Roe Smith
Edited by Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx


These thirteen essays explore a crucial historical question that has been notoriously hard to pin down: To what extent, and by what means, does a society's technology determine its political, social, economic, and cultural forms?