Seven Sublimes

"This is a follow-up to Nye's 1994 MITP book American Technological Sublime. (American Technological Sublime continues the exploration of the social construction of technology that David Nye began in his award-winning book Electrifying America. Here Nye examines the continuing appeal of the "technological sublime"--a term coined by Perry Miller--as a key to the nation's history, using as examples the natural sites, architectural forms, and technological achievements that ordinary people have valued intensely.) This new project extends the sublime into new areas that reflect especially the last fifty years. Thus, in Seven Sublimes, Nye explores the natural, technological, disastrous, martial, intangible, digital, and environmental sublimes--areas of sublime experience that were insufficiently recognized or theorized when Nye's earlier book came out nearly twenty-five years ago. Each suggests a different human relation to space and time. Most of these seven sublimes can be experienced at historic sites, ruins, large cities, national parks, or on websites"--