“The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appear to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.”

Robert Lynd (1892 to 1970)

Robert Staughton Lynd, and Helen Lynd, were a husband-and-wife team of American sociologists who collaborated on the Middletown books, which became classics of sociological literature as well as popular successes.

The Lynds are said to have been the first to apply the methods of cultural anthropology to the study of a modern Western city.