S. Lilly, a progressive English historian and sociologist, is already known to the Soviet reader from his book Automation and Social Progress, published in Russian in 1958. The book "People, Machines and History" offered to the Soviet reader covers not only the history of man's conquest of nature, starting from the creation of the first, most primitive tools, up to the latest achievements of modern science and technology - the rapid flowering of electronics, automation, cybernetics, nuclear, rocket and space technology, but also the history of his struggle to improve the organization of public life, corresponding to the growth of the material and spiritual forces of mankind.