Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (1961)

"Don't set out to raze all shrines — you'll frighten men," declares Ellsworth Toohey, villain of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. "Enshrine mediocrity — and the shrines are razed." I found rather less of interest in that book than I expected to when I picked it up back in college, but those particular lines have stayed with me. Though I can't imagine anyone…