Editing Lewis Mumford (section)

===First book===
Mumford's earliest books in the field of literary criticism have had a lasting influence on contemporary American literary criticism. His first book was ''The Story of Utopias'' (1922), an insightful exploration of the many visions of a better world that influenced the development of modern urban planning theory. In ''The Golden Day'' (1926), he argued for a mid-19th-century American literary canon comprising [[Herman Melville]], [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], [[Henry David Thoreau]], [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]] and [[Walt Whitman]], all of whom he argued reflected an antebellum American culture of the period that would be destroyed by the late-19th-century social changes wrought by the [[American Civil War]] and [[industrialization]] of the United States.<ref name=aronoff/> ''[[Herman Melville (book)|Herman Melville]]'' (1929), which combined an account of Melville's life with an interpretive discussion of his work,<ref>{{cite book| first=Donald L.|last=Miller|author-link=Donald L. Miller| title=Lewis Mumford: A Life| publisher=Grove Press| year=1989| page=274| isbn=9780802139344 }}</ref> was an important part of the [[Herman Melville#Melville revival and Melville studies|Melville revival]].<ref name=aronoff>{{cite book| page=303| first=Eric| last=Aronoff| chapter=The Melville Revival|title=Herman Melville in Context|editor-first=Kevin J. |editor-last=Hayes| publisher=Cambridge University Press| year=2018| isbn=9781316766965}}</ref>