René Dubos begins the work dramatically. He claims that human beings are biological creatures, but creatures whose bodies, minds and cultures are continuously made by their surroundings.

Moving between microbiology, anthropology, urban life, education and environmental thought, he argues against both genetic fatalism and that technological progress = freedom. He says, we reshape the world, then discover that the world we have built is reshaping us—often into forms poorly suited to its noise, congestion, uniformity and speed.

First published in 1968 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, the book belongs to the formative period of modern environmental thinking, before ecology hardened into a separate political niche. Dubos is interested not only in protecting “nature” elsewhere, but in the design of ordinary human habitats: cities, workplaces, institutions and social systems capable of accommodating difference rather than flattening it. Some of its anthropology carries the assumptions of its period, but its central warning remains unnervingly intact: technical capacity is not a moral command, and a society can become less habitable while congratulating itself on advancement. 

First Abacus edition, 1973. Paperback. Moderate cover wear with rubbing, edge wear and a pronounced crease to the lower front corner; internally sound.