Mumford and Wylie, as quoted in the epigraphs above, were anything but voices in the wilderness. The imperative they articulated could be found in one form or another in the pages of a remarkable number of books and articles published in wartime (as well as prewar and postwar) New York. By the time of World War II, the quest for a new view of “human nature,” for a new form of human self-description, had become a high priority of middle-class culture in the United States. …