The Original ‘Managerial Revolution’

One of our favourite re-discovered books here at Lume is ‘The Managerial Revolution’ by James Burnham. A classic work of political science, it was famously reviewed by George Orwell, and was one of the inspirations for ‘1984’. It has found a huge new audience, in e-book, in print, and now in audio as well. So we delighted when we ran across an original version from Pelican in the second hand bookshop just around the corner from our new offices in Putney, in south-west London. This edition is from 1945, and, on the inside flap explains that ‘owing to war-time production difficulties it is impossible to maintain large stocks of our publications’. There are, of course, unlimited copies available in the Kindle store.

This is what it used to look like. The view from our office is pretty good as well, especially on a sunny day.