Book excerpt: This book collects a fascinating series of letters written by theologian-philosopher Romano Guardini in the mid-1920s in which he works out for the first time his sense of the challenges of humanity in a culture increasingly dominated by the machine. With prophetic clarity and unsettling farsightedness, Guardini's letters poignantly capture the personal implications and social challenges of living in the technological age — concerns that have now come to fruition seventy years after they were first raised.