B. General Works

3070. Aaron, Daniel, ed. America in crisis; fourteen crucial episodes in American history. New York, Knopf, 1952. 363 p. 51–13214 E178.6.A17

Probably 14 other episodes equally "crucial" could be selected, but these were the examples chosen at Bennington College in 1949–50"for an experimental course designed to bring out the role and operation of values in American history." Each is a concise but serious attempt at interpretation of a striking event, from the Great Awakening of the 1740’s to the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, by an authority in the field.

3071. Adams, James Truslow, ed. Dictionary of American history; James Truslow Adams, editor in chief; R. V. Coleman, managing editor. 2d ed. rev. New York, Scribner, 1942. 5 v. 44–1876 E174.A43 1942

— —Index. New York, Scribner, 1942. 258 p. E174.A43 1942 Index

3072. Morris, Richard B., ed. Encyclopedia of American history. New York, Harper, 1953. xv, 776 p. maps, diagrs. 53–5384 E174.5.M847

The Scribner Dictionary was begun in 1936 and first published in 1940; it bears the name of J. T. Adams, a historical popularizer of the interwar decades, but was largely the work of Roy V. Coleman and his staff, as well as "morethan a thousand historians" to whom the 6,000 articles were farmed out. After 17 years it remains an indispensable work of reference, and the easiest first approach to many or most topics in the history of the United States from the discoveries down to the eve of World War II. It has the advantage of ready reference conferred by the alphabetical arrangement of its articles, and the inconveniences of such an arrangement applied to a subject matter which orders itself according to geography and chronology. The articles vary in length from four or five lines ("Assiniboine, Fort") to three or four pages ("Civil War"), and nearly all have from one to six references at the end. A number of serious errors remain uncorrected even in the second edition. The valuable Atlas supplementary to this Dictionary has been separately listed in Chapter VI (no. 2967). Professor Morris’ Encyclopedia is not greatly less comprehensive, and is an object-lesson in the quantity of information that may be crammed within a single pair of covers by intelligent organization, condensation, and book design. Here the material is arranged into a basic chronological section—the mainstream of national history—and six topical chronologies covering Expansion, Population and Immigration, the Constitution, the Economy, Science and Invention, and Thought and Culture. Three hundred brief biographies are alphabetically arranged, and there is a 40-page index with three columns to the page.

3073. Beard, Charles A., and Mary R. Beard. The rise of American civilization. New York, Macmillan, 1927. 2 v. 27–9541 E169.1.B32

These thick volumes by one of the best-known Americans and his accomplished wife, Mary Ritter Beard (b. 1876), are a conscious attempt to return to the history of civilization, albeit within a single nation, as it was understood by Voltaire in the 18th century and by Henry Thomas Buckle in the 19th. Ever since its publication The Rise of American Civilization has won the highest encomiums from professional historians and laymen alike; critics of the highest qualifications have used such phrases as "the highwater mark of modern historic presentation in America," and "the most brilliant historical survey of the American scene." Certainly few readable works have ever been so successful in incorporating so much economic, social, and intellectual detail into a coherent general narrative. It remains true that the presentation is uncommonly fluid and formless, rendering the book relatively unserviceable for systematic students or classroom use. Written at a time when Dr. Beard had abandoned the extremer tenets of his economic interpretation, it takes a moderate view of the movement eventuating in the Constitution, but it gives a strong economic coloring to its account of the Civil War. Volume I is "The Agricultural Era" and Volume II "The Industrial Era," and the transition between them is effected by "The Second American Revolution" of 1861–65. This is viewed as the irrepressible conflict between two phases of society which overthrew the custodians of the old order, as the Southern planter aristocracy had constituted themselves, and effected a permanent shift of the center of political gravity in American society. The discussion of military matters is always jejune, and some readers will feel that the views and actions of leading American statesmen are regularly looked at through the wrong end of the telescope. Mrs. Beard saw to it that the circumstances of American women were given a larger place than is common in general histories.The same publishers issued a two-volumes-in-one reprint in 1930. The narrative, which comes down to 1926, was continued on an even larger scale in America in Mid-Passage (no. 3479).

3074. Billington, Ray Allen. Westward expansion, a history of the American frontier, by Ray Allen Billington with the collaboration of James Blaine Hedges. New York, Macmillan, 1949. 873 p. 49–3099 E179.5.B63

"Bibliographical note": p. 757–834.

Professor Hedges, a pupil of F. J. Turner, was to have collaborated in a joint enterprise, but was prevented by circumstances from contributing more than three chapters and a critical reading of the manuscript. The book was planned "to follow the pattern that Frederick Jackson Turner might have used had he ever compressed his voluminous researches on the American frontier within one volume," and Professor Billington explains that it is not a work of primary research, but "a synthesis of thousands of pages of writings—in texts, monographs, and learned journals—inspired by Professor Turner’s original essays." "The Frontier Hypothesis" itself, and the criticisms it has encountered since 1925, are considered in Chapter 1 and the corresponding part of the bibliography, with the conclusion that these "modified, but did not refute, [Turner’s] basic doctrine." Both the text, which covers the whole period 1492–1896, and the thoroughly annotated bibliography are well-nigh encyclopedic in their inclusiveness, and the text is studded with numerous small maps.

3075. Bolton, Herbert E. Wider horizons of American history. New York, Appleton-Century, 1939. xv, 191 p. (Appleton-Century historical essays) 39–13861 E18.B75

CONTENTS.—The epic of greater America.—Defensive Spanish expansion and the significance of the borderlands.— The Mission as a frontier institution in the Spanish-American colonies.—The Black Robes [Jesuits] of New Spain.

Essays advancing and illustrating the author’s characteristic view that the broad phases of United States history are "common to most portions of the entire Western Hemisphere," and that "much of what has been written of each national history is but a thread out of a larger strand." The first essay "sketches in broad outline some of these larger aspects of New World history"; the others are "generalized treatments of special aspects of Western Hemisphere genesis" introduced in the first essay.

3076. Carruth, Gorton. The encyclopedia of American facts and dates, edited by Gorton Carruth and associates. New York, Crowell, 1956. 708 p. (A Crowell reference book) 56–7789 E174.5.C3

3077. Kull, Irving S., and Nell M. Kull. A short chronology of American history, 1492–1950. New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1952. 388 p. 52–9371 E174.5.K8

Mr. Carruth’s compilation is also a chronology, from 986 A. D. to 1955, and both volumes are extremely useful in diverse ways. The Kulls list some 10,000 events, largely in political, social, and economic history, in a single series, tersely and with little elucidation of the individual event; a supplementary volume to have been devoted to "the large field of cultural and intellectual history" has not appeared. The Encyclopedia lists its events in four parallel columns, devoted to politics, the arts, economic, scientific, and educational developments, and to sport and entertainment. Events are frequently elucidated at some length, with glances before and after, and from 1932 on each annual column opens with a kind of profile of the year in its spheres. The 116–page index of the Encyclopedia and the 90-page index of the Chronology add greatly to the reference value of each volume.

3078. Clark, Dan Elbert. The West in American history. New York, Crowell, 1937. 682 p. 37–4445 E178.C57

"Bibliographical notes": p. [627]–654.

Professor Clark wrote his survey of "the important features of the history of the West as a whole," from the expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez (1527) to the "passing of the frontier" about 1890, both for college use and for the general reader. It did not catch on as a college text, but remains a quite readable volume in which parts 2 and 3, from 1783 to the end, are organized topically, "with chapters arranged as nearly as possible in the order in which the subjects and problems with which they deal arose in the process of western settlement." The absence of footnote references is compensated for by a substantial bibliography arranged according to the 37 chapters of the book.

3079. Commager, Henry Steele, ed. Documents of American history. 5th ed. New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949. xxiii, 450, 759 p. (Crofts American history series) 49–49474 E173.C66 1949

This collection of original source materials for American history, reprinted in full or in extract, has enjoyed a wider use in college courses than any similar compilation since its original publication in 1934. The fifth edition contains 589 separate documents, each provided with a title, a reference tothe source from which it was derived, a brief introduction in smaller type, and, in most cases, a few references for further study. Professor Commager states that he has tried to limit his "selection to documents of an official and quasi-official character," but that he has not been completely consistent. Many important documents, he explains, have been omitted because they could not be included in extenso, and he was "not able to achieve a satisfactory condensation." In the fifth edition he was able to add 19 documents only by omitting 16 of those in the fourth, which is presumably why his textbook has remained unchanged since 1949. The practice of reprinting comparatively brief documents or other sources for students of American history began with the publication of the Old South Leaflets from 1883; the first collection in book form was Albert Bushnell Hart’s four-volume American History Told by Contemporaries (New York, Macmillan, 1897–1901; a supplementary fifth volume was added in 1929). The carefully delimited compilations of William MacDonald, Select Charters and Other Documents Illustrative of American History, 1606–1775; Select Documents Illustrative of the History of the United States, 1776–1861; and Select Statutes and Other Documents Illustrative of the History of the United States, 1861–1898 (New York, Macmillan, 1899 (401 p.), 1898 (465 p.), 1903 (442 p.)) have a continuing value because of that quality. Since Professor Commager’s last revision, Avery O. Craven, Walter Johnson, and Frederick Roger Dunn have compiled A Documentary History of the American People (Boston, Ginn, 1951.xxiii, 872 p.), the 250 readings of which include interpretive essays by historians and others as well as primary sources, and Oscar Handlin has edited Readings in American History (New York, Knopf, 1957.xxvi, 715, v p.), with 465 relatively brief and largely nondocumentary pieces arranged in 50 topical sections. Richard D. Heffner’s A Documentary History of the United States, expanded ed. ([New York] New American Library, 1956.303 p. A Mentor book, MD78) calls for mention as presenting a large amount of basic material at a very small price. A very informative discussion by Wallace Evan Davies, "From Sources to Problems: A Guide to Outside Readings," appeared in the American Quarterly, v. 7, summer 1956,p. 127–146; and a review article by Robert J. Taylor, "Inexpensive Source Materials in Early American History," calling attention to a surprisingly large group of recent paperback publications, appeared in The William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., v. 15, Jan. 1958, p. 95–110.

3080. Dictionary of American biography, published under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies. New York, Scribner, 1943. 21 v. 44–41895 E176.D562

— Index: volumes 1–20. New York, Scribner, 1943. 613 p. E176.D562 Index

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, edited by James Grant Wilson and John Fiske, was originally published in 6 volumes in 1886–89. A useful reference work in its day, it still has value in carrying individuals whose reputation has since suffered an eclipse, and in giving short notices of the sons or other close relatives of important persons, whose limited but respectable achievements are often hard to trace. Appleton’s was, however, never a completely dependable work-one ingenious forger contributed a whole series of quite fictitious lives—and it had no citations to sources of information, primary or secondary. It was shortly quite overshadowed by the British Dictionary of National Biography, originally published in 63 volumes between 1885 and 1901, which was undertaken by a commercial publishing house but carried out in accordance with the best scholarly standards of the day. After its completion two decades elapsed before it proved possible to set on foot an American enterprise on the same level. The American Council of Learned Societies was organized in 1919, and in 1922 appointed a committee of six scholars, headed by Dr. J. Franklin Jameson, to plan such a work. The committee eventually found a sponsor in Adolph S. Ochs of the New York Times, who made available $50,000 a year for ten years, and enabled editorial work to begin in 1926. The first editor, Allen Johnson of Yale University, fall a victim to Washington traffic in 1931, but had completed six volumes and established the production of the work on firm principles. His assistant editor, Dumas Malone of the University of Virginia, brought the Dictionary to a triumphant conclusion with the publication of volume XX in 1936. The following year the publishers added an index volume, with sections on the 13,633 subjects of biographies; the 2,243 contributors; the subjects arranged by state or country of birth, by school or college attended, and by occupation; and distinctive topics discussed in the biographies. Supplement 1, which appeared under the editorship of Harris E. Starr in 1944, contains 652 additional biographies, largely of persons whose deaths occurred between the original selections and the end of 1935, but also of some whose memoirs "failed to be included in the earlier volumes, although their inclusion would have been appropriate." Nineteen pages of errata may be found at the beginning of volume I of this reprint edition of 1943, rarer in libraries than the original issue. A second supplement, including persons whose deaths occurred before the end of 1940, has been announced for publication in 1958.The Dictionary has received some criticism, but most of it springs from the appetite for more and more dependable brief biographies which the Dictionary itself has created. The "D. A. B." will long remain a standard work of first resort for the student and scholar in the American field. Marion Dargan’s Guide to American Biography [1607–1933] (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1949–52. 2 v. in 1) is a convenient bio-bibliography of the eminent, which annotates some titles, and gives special attention to brief biographies and volumes of biographical sketches.

3081. Faulkner, Harold U. A visual history of the United States. Illustrated by Graphics Institute. New York, H. Schuman, 1953. 199 p. 53–10368 E178.5.F3

The only book which consistently applies the new technique of "graphics"—the expression of all ideas primarily in pictographs with language used to supplement or expand—to the whole field of American history. It grew out of an Army education program during World War II, which called for a number of wall charts based on one of Professor Faulkner’s textbooks; after the war Graphics Institute decided to proceed with "a comprehensive visual history," which was eight years in preparation, and for which Faulkner became the historical adviser and writer. The book’s primary content is 76 "graphic idea layouts" planned by the Director of the Institute, Herbert Rosenthal, and largely drawn by Mel Bernstein; red and black ink are used, permitting five contrasting shades including white, gray, and pink. The "graphics" are of three main types: maps, charts for quantitative summaries, and simplified multiple cartoons for idea situations such as "Factors for and against a Successful War of Independence," or "The March of Fascism, 1922–1939." Anachronisms and inaccuracies can be found in the graphics, but are few and minor. The subject matter is arranged in nine units, partly chronological, such as "Division and Reunion," and partly topical, such as "Intellectual and Cultural Life." The volume affords a good introduction to American history for the visually minded, and has matter of interest even for the well-informed.

3082. Gabriel, Ralph Henry. The lure of the frontier; a story of race conflict. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1929. 327 p. (The Pageant of America [v. 2]) 29–22308 E178.5.P2, v. 2 E179.5.G13

The expansion of the American people from 1670, when Dr. John Lederer climbed the Blue Ridge and gazed at the lands beyond, to the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896–97, organized around a sequence of illustrations, usually two to a page. They are regularly as well chosen as they are dismally reproduced, and are thoroughly explained by the accompanying text. A number of maps drawn or redrawn for this volume by Gregor Noetzel and others do provide very clear illustrations of individual situations in the movement of expansion. The circumstance that this volume was sold only with complete sets of The Pageant of America has kept it from enjoying a far wider usefulness than it has actually achieved.

3083. Handlin, Oscar, and others. Harvard guide to American history. Cambridge, Mass., Belknap Press, 1954. xxiv, 689 p. 53–5066 Z1236.H27

In 1896 two Harvard professors of history, Edward Channing and Albert Bushnell Hart, issued a Guide to the Study of American History (Boston, Ginn. xvi, 471 p.) in order to "introduce readers to the evolving methods and growing literature of the historical discipline." That literature grew and grew, and 16 years later Frederick Jackson Turner, who came from the University of Wisconsin to Harvard in 1910, joined them in a revised and augmented edition, Guide to the Study and Reading of American History (Boston, Ginn, 1912. xvi, 650 p.), which remained the standard work of the kind for over four decades, although during the later ones its increasing inadequacy was universally recognized and deplored. It required a team of six Harvard historians—the Arthur Meier Schlesingers Senior and Junior, Samuel Eliot Morison, Frederick Merk, and Paul Herman Buck in addition to Professor Handlin (whose name is deservedly first, since he and Mrs. Mary F. Handlin undertook the labor of getting the volume through the press)—to bring out the third and present version, which was announced for publication more than once before its actual appearance. With a few exceptions, imprints later than 1950 are not listed. Of the three parts of the Harvard Guide, the first is a series of 66essays and special lists on the more general aspects of American historical study, such as "Principles of Historical Criticism," "The Mechanics of Citation," "Guides to Manuscript Materials," "Bibliographies of American History," and "Scholarly Uses of Historical Fiction" (a very skillful classification by the elder Schlesinger). The second part is a sequence of 211 bibliographical sections, primarily chronological and secondarily topical, covering American history from prehistoric times to 1953. Each section is divided into "Summary" (a brief outline of the subject), "General Works," "Special Works" (including many periodical articles), "Sources," and "Bibliography" (other lists of reference). The third part is a large index filling 143 double-column pages, whichrefers only to the principal entry for a work and ignores the repetitions in more abbreviated form. The student who can afford only one reference book in general American history would find this his natural choice.

3084. Hicks, John D., and George E. Mowry. A short history of American democracy. 2d ed. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1956. 854, lxxv p. 56–2751 E178.1.H56 1956

Bibliographies at end of chapters.

Most college textbooks in American history now come in two volumes under multiple authorship; Professor Hicks’ one-volume survey, originally published in 1943, has acquired a joint author in its third revision. As in nearly all such works, recent history is expanded at the expense of the remoter past: the period 1928–55 receives approximately the same number of pages as 1607–1815. The art staff of Houghton Mifflin has supplied abundant illustrations from contemporary sources and numerous small maps of great clarity, and the chapter bibliographies are uncommonly full and effectively organized.

3085. A History of American life, edited by Arthur Meier Schlesinger and Dixon Ryan Fox. New York, Macmillan, 1927–48. 13 v. E169.1.H67

The Library has classified other sets, in which most of the volumes have later imprints without change of text, as E169.1.H672 and E169.1.H673. "Critical essay on authorities" in each volume.

3086. Vol. 1. The coming of the white man, 1492–1848, by Herbert Ingram Priestley. 1929. xx, 411 p 29–17105 E178.P94

3087. Vol. 2. The first Americans, 1607–1690, by Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker. 1927. xx, 358 p. 27–24317 E191.W5

3088. Vol. 3. Provincial society, 1690–1763, by James Truslow Adams. 1927. xvii, 374 p. 27–24316 E195.A22

3089. Vol. 4. The revolutionary generation, 1763–1790, by Evarts Boutell Greene. 1943. xvii, 487 p. 43–16080 E320.1.G82

3090. Vol. 5. The completion of independence, 1790–1830, by John Allen Krout and Dixon Ryan Fox. 1944. xxiii, 487 p. 44–51219 E301.K7

3091. Vol. 6. The rise of the common man, 1830–1850, by Carl Russell Fish. 1927. xix, 391 p. 27–24315 E338.F53

3092. Vol. 7. The irrepressible conflict, 1850–1865, by Arthur Charles Cole. 1934. xv, 468 p. 34–5502 E415.7.C69

3093. Vol. 8. The emergence of modern America, 1865–1878, by Allan Nevins. 1927. xix, 446 p. 27–24314 E661.N5

3094. Vol. 9. The nationalizing of business, 1878–1898, by Ida M. Tarbell. 1936. xvi, 313 p. 36–28986 HC105.T3

3095. Vol. 10. The rise of the city, 1878–1898, by Arthur Meier Schlesinger. 1933. xvi, 494 p. 33–2887 HT123.S3

3096. Vol. 11. The quest for social justice, 1898–1914, by Harold Underwood Faulkner. 1931. xvii, 390 p. 31–5574 E741.F26

3097. Vol. 12. The great crusade and after, 1914–1928, by Preston William Slosson. 1930. xviii, 486 p. 30–22386 E741.S63

3098. Vol. 13. The age of the great depression, 1929–1941, by Dixon Wecter. 1948. xiv, 434 p. 48–10172 E806–W43 1948a

This series was the first large-scale attempt to present the development of the United States through the canons of "the New History" or social history, for which an energetic propaganda had been made in the two decades before 1927. In it the four standard themes of traditional historiography-political, constitutional, diplomatic, and military narrative—were by design either eliminated or subordinated to economic, social, and intellectual factors. Inasmuch as the latter are less amenable to storytelling, description or analysis becomes at least as prominent as narrative. The editors of the venture were the elder Arthur Meier Schlesinger (b.1888), professor of history at Harvard from 1924 to 1954, whose New Viewpoints (no. 3139) was one of the best-known presentations of the new outlook, and Dixon Ryan Fox (1887–1945), a teacher of history at Columbia from 1913 to 1934, in which year he became president of Union College at Schenectady, N.Y., leaving his volume of the series to be completed by another hand. The series was originally planned to comprise 12 volumes, of which 4 were published together in November 1927, and 6 more appeared in the course of the following decade. The two stragglers were issued during World War II, and a 13th volume, continuing the series to the outbreak of that War, added in 1948. The volumes of the series were usually hailed with enthusiasm on their first appearance, and most of the authors carried out their pioneer tasks withindustry, intelligence, and zeal. Several decades of use have led many to conclude that the volumes are lacking in cohesiveness, frequently fall into mere cataloging, and in quality vary rather widely from chapter to chapter. One critic pointed out that the division into periods defined by political dates was a basic inconsistency. But if they did not arrive at a definitive form for social history, they certainly constituted a great advance in its practice. The illustrations from contemporary sources are critically handled if inadequately reproduced, and the bibliographies are uncommonly full and well organized and annotated.

3099. Hofstadter, Richard. The American political tradition and the men who made it. New York, Knopf, 1948. xi, 378, xviii p. 48–8258 E178.H727 1948

These 12 "studies in the ideology of American statesmanship," as the author terms them, form an unusual and striking synthesis of the history of political and economic ideas with that of practical politics. One takes its title from a patrician "agitator," Wendell Phillips, and two others from groups of politicians, the Founding Fathers, and the "Spoilsmen" of the Gilded Age. The remainder are concerned with the ideas and careers of nine prominent statesmen from Jefferson to F. D. Roosevelt, all but two of whom (Calhoun and Bryan, who tried hard enough) reached the Presidency. They all, Professor Hofstadter insists, shared a common politico-economic creed, the tenets of which included the sanctity of private property, the value of opportunity, the necessity of competition to a beneficial social order, and the obligation of politics to preserve the competitive scheme. Since the time of Bryan, "progressive" thought has looked backwards, trying to undo the mischief of the recent past "and re–create the old nation of limited and decentralized power, genuine competition, democratic opportunity, and enterprise." The implied criticism is not developed into a positive doctrine. The author is a master of pertinent quotation from primary sources, and his admirable "Bibliographical Essay" (p. 349–378) reveals the vast reading out of which his shapely essays have come.

3100. Leopold, Richard W., and Arthur S. Link, eds. Problems in American history. 2d ed. Englewood Cliffs, N. J., Prentice-Hall, 1957. xxi, 706 p. 57–6544 E178.L5 1957

Along with Potter and Manning (no. 3106) and the Amherst multivolume Problems series (no. 3107), this represents the newer tendency in source-books for college courses in history, wherein the extracts, mostly from contemporary writings, are organized so as to "provide conflicting and contrasting points of view on major events and controversies," as the present editors put it, and so to make their materials more meaningful for the pupil. Here the editors have recruited 20 specialists able to draw on firsthand research, each of whom presents one of "20 closely integrated problems," "a complex of debates that evolve, the one out of the other, into the vast panorama of American history." They range from "The Sources of [Political] Authority," presented by Edmund S. Morgan, to "Global War and Postwar Crisis," by L. Ethan Ellis, but as usual in recent textbooks, the earlier development is slighted, 1829 and "Jacksonian Democracy" being reached in Problem 6. For reasons not explained, the contributors have been led to avoid "formal documents, such as statutes, treaties, court decisions, and diplomatic notes"—which certainly underlines one of the hazards of this approach. The original edition appeared in 1952; in the second the "focus" of many of the problems has been sharpened by revision or recasting; each has been shortened by about one-fourth, resulting in a volume of 706 instead of 929 pages; and three substitutions of new authors and problems have been made.

3101. Lillard, Richard G. American life in autobiography, a descriptive guide. Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 1956. 140 p. 56–8689 Z5301.L66

An annotated bibliography of over 400 selected American autobiographies arranged in 22 occupational categories, and provided with an index of names and with special lists of the authors who are immigrants, Indians, Jews, or Negroes. The compiler aims his notes on matters emphasized, style, and reader–appeal at "present–day readers of all sorts." In order to include only books "that library patrons can get hold of," he has limited his entries to books published or republished since 1900, and thereby narrowed the retrospective value of his guide. His thoughtful introduction analyzes the weaknesses, strengths, and significance of autobiographical writing: "the better American autobiographies are structured around a perception of change on two levels, the social on one and the personal and intellectual on the other."

3102. Matthews, William. American diaries; an annotated bibliography of American diaries written prior to the year 1861, compiled by William Matthews with the assistance of Roy Harvey Pearce. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1945. xiv, 383 p. (University of California publications in English, v. 16) A45–1983 PE.11.C3, v. 16 Z5305.U5M3

The diary, here defined as "a day-by-day record of what interested the diarist, each day’s recordbeing self-contained and written shortly after the events occurred," is a relatively undistorted record of human experience whose value has always been recognized by historians of every aspect of civilization. This annotated list of all published American diaries which were begun between 1629 (the Rev. Francis Higginson’s journal of his voyage to New England) and the outbreak of the Civil War is a valuable auxiliary to nearly all branches of American studies. Its usefulness is evidenced by the great variety of historical and other periodicals, memoirs, and family histories in which the diaries are printed.

Each diary is listed under the year of its first entry (alphabetically within the year). The diarist and his localities are identified, and his major interests noted, with travel and war naturally predominating, but by no means to the exclusion of other concerns in great variety. An index of localities is unfortunately lacking. Professor Matthews of the University of California at Los Angeles has gone on to elaborate the Canadian materials in this volume in his Canadian Diaries and Autobiographies (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1950. 130 p.), and to produce kindred lists of British diaries and autobiographies, but has unfortunately not dealt with American autobiographies, nor American diaries beginning later than 1860.

3103. Morison, Samuel Eliot, and Henry Steele Commager. The growth of the American Republic. [4th ed., rev., and enl.] New York, Oxford University Press, 1950. 2 v. maps (part fold., part col.) 50–8134 E178.M85 1950

CONTENTS.—v. 1. 1000—1865. Bibliography (p. [741]–789)—v. 2. 1865–1950. Bibliography (p. [829]–895).

Morison (b. 1887), a Harvard-trained teacher of history at Harvard, was the first holder of the first chair of American history in any British University, the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professorship at Oxford. Endowed by Lord Rothermere in memory of a son fallen in World War I, it was to be filled only by American citizens. The most enduring result of Professor Morison’s tenure (1922–25) was his two volumes, The Oxford History of the United States, 1783–1917 (Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1927), a narrative the scope and direction of which, the author wrote, were largely determined by "the questions asked by my English friends and pupils." This origin was evident in its strong emphasis upon Anglo-American relations and the campaigns of the Civil War; and the author’s field of concentration could be inferred from the relatively thin treatment of the half-century after 1865. It nevertheless met with warmer appreciation at home than in Britain, and three years later Henry Steele Commager (b. 1902), trained at Wisconsin and domiciled at New York University, collaborated with Morison in converting it into a one-volume college text, incorporating much 19th-century social history, while the original author added a preliminary section going back to 1763. In 1937, following the characteristic evolution of American historical textbooks, it grew into a two-volume work, with the second volume brought down to the election of 1936. The third edition of 1942 "extended the story backward to the origin of man in America," as well as forward, and the fourth, entered above, reaches Truman’s reelection in 1948. Despite the numerous patchings, it retains much of the stylistic vitality of the parent work, and notwithstanding the heaviest competition has maintained its place as a text for college courses. Other noteworthy college texts covering the whole of American history in two volumes are the following: Leland D. Baldwin, The Stream of American History (New York, R. R. Smith, 1952); Harry J. Carman and Harold C. Syrett, A History of the American People (New York, Knopf, 1952); Merle E. Curti, Richard H. Shryock, Thomas C. Cochran, and Fred Harvey Harrington, An American History (New York, Harper, 1950); and Robert E. Riegel and David F. Long, The American Story (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1955).

3104. Parkes, Henry Bamford. The United States of America, a history. New York, Knopf, 1953. xvii, 773, xxiv p. illus. 52–12413 E178.P25

Includes bibliographies.

A one-volume college textbook covering the whole of United States history from "The Expansion of Europe" to "Society at Mid-Century [1950]." While political and economic matters are by no means skimped, numerous chapters are devoted to social, intellectual, and artistic developments, and these usually receive clear and concise expositions instead of the unenlightening catalogs of names and titles so frequently found in textbooks. Maps and illustrations are well drafted or chosen, and the end matter is exceptionally useful.

3105. Paxson, Frederic L. History of the American frontier, 1763–1893. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1924. xvii, 598 p. 24–23381 E179.5.P34

"East of the frontier of 1763 the American groups are best to be examined as European frontiers in America; west of the line is an American frontier to be studied in contrast with the East." Professor Paxson was the first to make a detailed and unified narrative out of F. J. Turner’s famous generalization, and pursued his theme through the admission of the six "omnibus States" in 1889–90. The post-Civil War period, however, received relativelybriefer treatment (p. 494 ff.). Eight years later Paxson stated his conviction that, "after a generation of general currency, the Turner hypothesis stands today as acceptable as when it was launched" ("A Generation of the Frontier Hypothesis, 1893–1932," reprinted in The Great Demobilization and Other Essays. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1941. 206 p.).

3106. Potter, David M., and Thomas G. Manning, eds. Select problems in historical interpretation. New York, Holt [1949–50] 2 v. 49–9401 E178.P78

Volume a by Thomas G. Manning and David M. Potter, with the collaboration of Wallace E. Davies.

CONTENTS.—[v. 1] Nationalism and sectionalism in America, 1775–1877.—[v. 2] Government and the American economy, 1870–present.

These companion volumes constitute the most complex and refined development of the problem sourcebook yet to appear, and make a considerable demand upon both teacher and student—so much so that, the collaborator in the later volume thinks, they are best deferred to "the senior seminar or conference group level." Each volume singles out a major theme in American development, presents various of its aspects in terms of a series of related problems, and aims to make the student analyze the factors involved, "explore the complexity of the issues, and sense the multiplicity of the possible solutions." There are twelve 35 to 40-page problems in each volume; the material presented under each problem is "a balance of fact, opinion, and commentary," with the editors largely providing "the knowledge which is the necessary condition to an investigation of the topics," and relating "each topic to the central subject of the Problem." The theme of the first volume culminates in "Interpretations of the Civil War," with a sequel on "The Political Status of the Negro after Appomattox"; that of the second in the NRA, NRLB, and other agencies of the New Deal, with a sequel on the OPA in World War II.

3107. Problems in American civilization; readings selected by the Department of American Studies, Amherst College. Boston, Heath, 1949–57. 29 v.

A series of slender, paperbound volumes initiated in 1949 under the joint editorship of Earl Latham, George Rogers Taylor, and George F. Whicher; in the latest volumes Professor Taylor appears as the sole editor. The first eight to be published were issued as a numbered series; the subsequent ones have been without numbers, and it has seemed best here to list them all alphabetically by author. They are of course designed to provide "collateral reading" for college courses in American history, and they reflect the trend of the last 15 years to arrange source and documentary materials for such use in relation to controversial issues of the past and present. Each volume of the series has the same arrangement: the editor’s Introduction outlines the "Problem" in a few pages; "The Clash of Issues" is a page of striking formulations from either side; there follow a dozen or so selections from contemporary sources and recent historians, and a brief final essay making "Suggestions for Additional Reading." The success of the series as a teaching medium appears from the fact that the first two Problems to be issued have now appeared in revised editions. It seems equally well calculated to provide the general reader with a striking introduction to the topics with which it deals.

3108. Cope, Alfred Haines, and Fred Krinsky, eds. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Supreme Court. 1952. 109 p. 52–1656 Law

3109. Fenno, Richard F., ed. The Yalta Conference. 1955. 112 p. 55–1646 D734.C7 1945i

3110 Greene, Theodore P., ed. American imperialism in 1898. 1955. 105 p. 55–1630 E713.G7

3111 Greene, Theodore P., ed. Wilson at Versailles. 1957. 114 p. 57–1944 D644.G7

3112. Kennedy, Gail, ed. Democracy and the gospel of wealth. 1949. 116 p. 49–5916 E169.1.P897, no. 6

3113. Kennedy, Gail, ed. Education for democracy; the debate over the report of the President’s Commission on Higher Education. 1952. 117 p. 52–10171 LA226.A485K4

3114. Kennedy, Gail, ed. Evolution and religion; the conflict between science and theology in modern America. 1957. 114 p. 57–1698 BL245.K4

3115. Kennedy, Gail, ed. Pragmatism and American culture. 1950. 114 p. 51–7648 B832.K4

3116. Latham, Earl, ed. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Rev. ed. 1956. 126 p. 56–14513 JK146.L35 1956

First published in 1949.

3117. Latham, Earl, ed. John D. Rockefeller, robber baron or industrial statesman? 1949. 115 p. 49–5916 E169.1.P897, no. 7

3118. Rozwenc, Edwin C., ed. The Compromise of 1850. 1957. 99 p. 57–3018 E423.R8

3119. Rozwenc, Edwin C., ed. The New Deal: revolution or evolution? 1949. 113 p. 49–5916 E169.1.P897, no. 8

3120. Rozwenc, Edwin C., ed. Reconstruction in the South. 1952. 109 p. 52–1818 E668.R83

3121. Rozwenc, Edwin C., ed. Roosevelt, Wilson and the trusts. 1950. 115 p. 51–7688 HD2785.R6

3122. Rozwenc, Edwin C., ed. Slavery as a cause of the Civil War. 1949. 104 p. 49–5916 E169.1.P897, no. 5

3123. Sanford, Charles L., ed. Benjamin Franklin and the American character. 1955. 102 p. 55–2272 E302.6.F8S32

3124. Taylor, George Rogers, ed. Thegreat tariff debate, 1820–1830. 1953. 95 p. 53–1170 HF3027.3.T38

3125. Taylor, George Rogers, ed. Hamilton and the national debt. 1950. 108 p. 51–7557 HJ8106.T3

3126. Taylor, George Rogers, ed. Jackson venus Biddle; the struggle over the Second Bank of the United States. 1949. 119 p. 49–5916 E169.1.P897, no. 3

3127. Taylor, George Rogers, ed. The Turner thesis concerning the role of the frontier in American history. Rev. ed. 1956. 109 p. 56–14601 E179.5.T96T3 1956

First published in 1949.

3128. Wahlke, John C., ed. The causes of the American Revolution. 1950. 108 p. 51–7685 E210.W3

3129. Wahlke, John C., ed. Loyalty in a democratic state. 1952. 111 p. 52–1192 JK1759.W33

3130. Waller, George M., ed. Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt and the coming of the war. 1953. 112 p. 53–1342 E806.W22

3131. Waller, George M., ed. Puritanism in early America. 1950. 115 p. 51–4731 F7.W3

3132. Warne, Colston Estey, ed. Industry-wide collective bargaining: promise or menace? 1950. 113 p. 51–4732 E169.1.P897, v. 9

3133. Warne, Colston Estey, ed. The Pullman boycott of 1894; the problem of Federal intervention. 1955. 112 p. 55–3476 HD5325.R12 1894.C6

3134. Whicher, George F., ed. The transcendentalist revolt against materialism. 1949–107 p. 49–5916 E169.1.P897,no. 4

3135. Whicher, George F., ed. William Jennings Bryan and the campaign of 1896. 1953. 109 p. 53–1341 E664.B87W6

3136. Ziegler, Benjamin Munn, ed. Immigration, an American dilemma. 1953. 118 p. 53–8474 JV6455.Z5

3137. Riegel, Robert E. America moves west. 3d ed. New York, Holt, 1956. 659 p. illus. 56–6073 F591–R53 1956

Professor Riegel of Dartmouth College published the first edition of this textbook, as readable as it is informative, in 1930. His third revision adds a new chapter (38) on the Pacific Coast as well as "pertinent research of the past decade," and offers "completely redone" lists of readings (with very brief entries) at the end of each chapter. Chronologically the book extends from the outbreak of the American Revolution to the collapse of "Western Panaceas" with the defeat of Bryan in the Presidential election of 1896. There are concretely descriptive chapters on the successive phases of daily living in the West and on the social consequences of diverse means of transportation. Concluding chapters are "The West is Fictionalized," which affirms that "the most distinctive of American experiences" still offers an unexhausted supply of raw material for the creative writer, and "The Historian Discovers the West," which is largely concerned with the "frontier hypothesis" of Frederick Jackson Turner and its critics (cf. no. 3147).

3138. Rippy, James Fred. America and the strife of Europe. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1938. 263p. 38–25892 E175.9.R57

"Critical bibliography": [233]–250.

A small volume which takes a large view of the place of the United States in the world, as it considers the place which "the strife of Europe" has occupied in the several American ideologies ofisolationism, democratic enthusiasm, pacificism, and expansionism. It furthermore illustrates how inter-European conflicts have facilitated the two major movements of American expansion and the assertion of the Monroe Doctrine. The author found little to approve in the efforts of 20th-century American statesmen to take a hand in the maintenance of European peace.

3139. Schlesinger, Arthur Meier. New viewpoints in American history. New York, Macmillan, 1922. 299 p. 22–7401 E175.9.S34

"Bibliographical note" at the end of each chapter.

CONTENTS.—The influence of immigration on American history.—Geographic factors in American development.—Economic influences in American history.—The decline of aristocracy in America.—Radicalism and conservatism in American history.—The role of women in American history.—The American Revolution.—Economic aspects of the movement for the Constitution.—The significance of Jacksonian democracy.—The state rights fetish.—The foundations of the modern era.—The riddle of the parties.

3140. Schlesinger, Arthur Meier. Paths to the present. New York, Macmillan, 1949. 317 p. 49–7676 E178.S33

"For further reading": p. 278–302.

In New Viewpoints the author’s object was "to bring together and summarize, in nontechnical language, some of the results of the researches of the present age of historical study and to show their importance to a proper understanding of American history." While the author sought to identify his "new history" with the emergence of academic historiography, he was actually concerned with the movement whereby "a record of arid political and constitutional development began to be enriched by the new conceptions and fresh points of view afforded by the scientific study of economics, sociology, and politics." Much of what seemed new in 1922 is now agreed commonplace, while some positions which then seemed self-evident now appear doubtful or worse, but Professor Schlesinger’s volume remains a landmark in the expanding content of his discipline. Paths to the Present contains 13 essays grouped under 4 headings: "National Traits," "Government of the People," "War and Peace," and "Ampersand." Each is in some degree the pursuit of a single topic through the whole sweep of American history, and each evidences its author’s extraordinary knowledge combined with the absence or successful concealment of any personal convictions. "Biography of a Nation of Joiners," "Food in the Making of America," and "Casting the National Horoscope" all contain material hardly to be found elsewhere, and the rest take larger points of view than most treatments of their subjects.

3141. Schouler, James. History of the United States of America, under the Constitution. New York, Dodd, Mead, 1894–1913. 7 v. 2–4002 E301.S372

Volumes 1–5 rev. ed., 1894.

CONTENTS.—v. 1. 1783–1801. Rule of Federalism.—v. 2. 1801–1817. Jefferson Republicans.—v. 3. 1817–1831. Era of good feeling.—v. 4. 1831–1847. Democrats and Whigs.—v. 5. 1847–1861. Free soil controversy.—v. 6. 1861–1865. The Civil War.—v. 7. 1865–1877. The Reconstruction period.

Schouler (1839–1920) was compelled by the failure of his hearing in 1871 to relinquish a very successful career as a lawyer specializing in Civil War veterans’ claims. He turned to the compilation of a number of legal textbooks, much used in their day, and utilized his leisure to embark upon a project long meditated: a continuation of George Bancroft’s history of the United States from the adoption of the Constitution to the outbreak of the Civil War. After some delays he brought out the first volume, through W. H. Morrison of Washington, D.C., in 1880. The history won the favor of the general public, and achieved its original terminus with volume V in 1891; this was the first to be published by Dodd, Mead and Co. of New York, who thereafter handled the whole set. In 1899 and 1913 the author added volumes on periods to which his personal acquaintance extended and on which his opinions were firmly held: the Civil War and Reconstruction to the election of President Hayes. These volumes naturally drew the fire of the new race of academic historians as being too narrowly political and too unsympathetic with Southern secessionism. Today, after various failures to achieve total history, it is easier to appreciate the work for what it is: a detailed political, constitutional, diplomatic, and military history of the first century of the American Nation, chronologically precise, judiciously proportioned, and economically narrated. As by-products of his magnum opus, Schouler produced two volumes of shorter studies, containing a number of pieces noteworthy for their information or interpretations: Historical Briefs and Constitutional Studies, State and Federal (New York, Dodd, Mead, 1896 (310 p.) and 1897 (332 p.) respectively). In 1906 he published a sterling contribution to social history: Americans of 1776 (New York, Dodd, Mead. 317 p.), which reviews the state of society in the Thirteen Colonies on the eve of the Revolution.

3142. Smith, Bernard, ed. The democratic spirit, a collection of American writings from the earliest times to the present day. 2d ed., rev. New York, Knopf, 1943. xxxv, 923 p. 43–51285 PS507.S59 1943

3143. Angle, Paul M., ed. By these words; great documents of American liberty, selected and placed in their contemporary settings. Illustrated by Edward A. Wilson. New York, Rand, McNally, 1954. 560 p. 54–10616 E173.A79

The Democratic Spirit is a collection of fairly extended extracts from 100 American authors, "the truly democratic and characteristic works of the democratic writers of this country." The kinds of writing included range from political discourse to fiction and poetry embodying democratic aspirations or assailing some concrete wrong such as slavery. The literary extracts of the 1920’S and 30’s exemplify the anti-fascism and somewhat diffuse social protest of the day, when the American people "began to think of economic democracy as indispensable to liberty," now conceived "as a matter of decent living and collective effort as well as freedom from restraint." A note on each author precedes his work. By These Words is a smaller collection of 46 documents, from the Mayflower Compact of 1620 to President Eisenhower’s inaugural address of 1953, presented in a more attractive format than is usual in such compilations, with uncrowded pages and interspersed sketches. Mr. Angle’s well-proportioned introductions to each document supply informative backgrounds for the general reader.

3144. Smith, Theodore Clarke. The United States as a factor in world history. New York, Holt, 1941. 142 p. (The Berkshire studies in European history) 41–10192 E183.7.S6

"Bibliographical note": p. 133–138.

A tour-de-force of condensation which considers American history from 1763 to 1940 from the standpoint of world history. The author identifies two main factors of persistent influence: the republicanism of American society deriving from the circumstance that no feudal aristocracy grew up in the Thirteen Colonies, and the economic importance of transatlantic commerce. He traces their presence through three periods: that of separation from Europe, to 1823; that of isolated democracy, to 1897; and that of the United States as a world power.

3145. Stone, Irving, and Richard Kennedy, eds. We speak for ourselves; a self-portrait of America. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1950. xvii, 462 p. 50–9974 E176.S875

Extracts rarely exceeding 8 pages in length from 64 American autobiographies, mostly of the 20th or later 19th century, and arranged in 7 rather esoteric categories which Mr. Stone explains in his introduction. For the most part the compilers have selected some striking or representative episode, but in a few instances they "undertook the task of weaving together in a cohesive whole" passages scattered through a book, "exercising extreme care not to alter either the meaning or the effect of a story." They hoped to create an interest which will send readers back to the original volumes, for which, unfortunately, they provide nothing more than short titles.

3146. Thistlethwaite, Frank. The great experiment; an introduction to the history of the American people. Cambridge [Eng.] University Press, 1955. 335 p. 55–4496 E178.T35

The author is Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and his book, the "result of several years’ teaching American history to Cambridge undergraduates," aims "to provide the British student with a point of departure." He hopes, however, to interest American readers by identifying "the special characteristics that distinguish Americans from Europeans"; they will be quite as much attracted by his multitude of striking insights and perspicuous generalizations. He takes as basic "the grand process of migration from Europe," which has brought into being "a new variant of western society"—"the mobile society," which contrasts with the static and conformist societies of Europe. He further emphasizes that "American culture grew to maturity within an Atlantic world with nerve-centers" in Britain as well as America. He gives far more attention to economic factors than to political personalities, and in fact industrialists cut a greater figure in his pages than do statesmen. "In the mid-twentieth century the American people still pursue their Revolutionary ideal," the most ambitious ever to command the allegiance of a great nation, and therefore, naturally if regrettably, one that "has never achieved full acceptance in practice." The Great Experiment is one of the most distinguished interpretations of American history to come from a European pen. Harold Plaskitt’s The United States of America; the People, Their History, Institutions, and Way of Life [2d ed.] (London, University Tutorial Press, 1953. 200 p.) is a revision after ten years of a wartime manual which attempted "to provide background information for the improvement of Anglo-American cooperation." It consists of 15 topical chapters, such as "The Constitution," "Culture and Entertainment," "Capital and Labour," and "Relations with the Outside World." It is selective, straightforward, and often considerably simpler than the subject matter it seeks to present.

3147. Turner, Frederick Jackson. The frontier in American history. New York, Holt, 1950, ©1947. 375 p. 53–482 E179.5.T956 1950

CONTENTS.—The significance of the frontier in American history.—The first official frontier of the Massachusetts Bay.—The Old West.—The Middle West.—The Ohio Valley in American history.—The significance of the Mississippi Valley in American history.—The problem of the West.—Dominant forces in Western life.—Contributions of the West to American democracy.—Pioneer ideals and the state university.—The West and American ideals.—Social forces in American history.—Middle Western pioneer democracy.

The American Historical Association, meeting at Chicago during the World’s Fair year (1893), were told by a young assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin that, up to then, American history had been in essence the history of the colonization of the great West, that the frontier, "the hinter edge of free land," was the line of most rapid and effective Americanization and the salient factor in national unification, that frontier individualism had promoted democracy and transmitted it to the East and even to Europe, and that the American intellect owed its distinguishing characteristics to the lingering effects of frontier life. Seldom has a group of scholars proved so ripe for conversion; the "frontier hypothesis" speedily became a kind of orthodoxy among American historians and went for over 30 years without serious criticism. The present volume, one of the two that Turner (1861–1932) published during his lifetime, opens with the paper of 1893 and contains 12 more essays and addresses that he produced down to 1918; the original edition appeared in 1920. The Early Writings of Frederick Jackson Turner (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1938. 316 p.) includes a 40-page bibliography of writings by and about Turner, compiled by Everett E. Edwards, and an introduction on "Turner’s Formative Years" by Fulmer Mood. Mr. Edwards has also compiled a volume of References on the Significance of the Frontier in American History (Washington, 1939. 99 p. U. S. Dept. of Agriculture Library, Bibliographical contributions, no. 25. 2d ed.); some later contributions to the debate are listed in the bibliography of Billington above (no. 3074). Three other books by Turner, two of them posthumous, are nos. 3356, 3357, and 3784.

3148. Weyl, Nathaniel. Treason; the story of disloyalty and betrayal in American history. Washington, Public Affairs Press, 1950. 491 p. 50–6616 E179.W5

3149. Weyl, Nathaniel. The battle against disloyalty. New York, Crowell, 1951. 378 p. 51–3355 E743.5.W4

"Throughout the hundred and seventy-five years during which the United States has existed as a nation, mercenaries and psychopaths, zealots and misguided idealists, enemy agents and servants of antidemocratic faiths have betrayed their allegiance and struck at the foundations of the Republic." Treason passes briskly from Charles Lee, Benedict Arnold, John Fries, Aaron Burr, Thomas W. Dorr, John Brown, and Clement Vallandigham, to the pro-Nazis and the subversive Communists of our own day. No documentation is offered for these condensed narratives, but they are reasonably accurate if somewhat journalistic in manner. The Battle against Disloyalty is provided with "reference notes" at the end of the volume. It has some material on the secret service during the Civil War and World War I, but is largely concerned with the Communist and Nazi menaces since 1919, and the counterintelligence work, congressional investigations, legal prosecutions, and loyalty programs by which they have been combated.

3150. Wish, Harvey. Society and thought in America. New York, Longmans, Green, 1950–52. 2 v. 50–9981 E169.1.W65

CONTENTS.—v. 1. Society and thought in early America; a social and intellectual history of the American people through 1865.—v. 2. Society and thought in modern America; a social and intellectual history of the American people from 1865.

A general survey of American history with politics and economics subordinated to social and intellectual factors. If it is short on causality and may not cut very deep, it is exceptionally felicitous in its choice of material and in its organization. It is furthermore presented in a leisurely kind of exposition which avoids the cluttered patterns so common in general works of its type, and makes the student’s task relatively pleasant. It naturally becomes less adequate as it approaches the complexities of the present day. Each volume has very pertinent illustrations from contemporary sources and a judiciously selected bibliography which the author has deliberately held down to a limited number of significant rifles.

3151. Woestemeyer, Ina Faye, ed. The westward movement; a book of readings on our changing frontiers. With the editorial collaboration of J[ohn] Montgomery Gambrill. New York, Appleton-Century, 1939. xx, 500 p. illus. 39–14444 F591.W85

"Notes on the literature of the westward movement": p. 477–484; "Bibliography of sources quoted": p. 485–490.

This anthology originated as a "Professional Project" of the editor in her work for the Ed. D. degree at Teachers College, Columbia University, where Dr. Gambrill was a professor of history. In it the "Westward Movement" is broadly conceived, both chronologically and as a social process. Most of the extracts are from documents or the writings of participants or direct observers, but some are from such historians of the frontier as Parkman and Everett Dick. The arrangement is topical, with special attention to the several factors, chiefly economic, which entered into "The Lure of the West," and to the transmission of culture to the frontier, including a chapter on "Folklore, Ballads, and Literature." The editor has made rather too many excisions (indicated by 3 or 4 dots) from her selections, and the large body of contemporary illustrations is provided with quite inadequate identification.

3152. Woods, Henry F. American sayings; famous phrases, slogans and aphorisms. Rev. and enl. ed. New York, Perma Giants, 1950, ©1949. 312 p. 50–3259 PN6084.A5W6 1950

Striking formulations of significant ideas make as well as reflect history, in the United States as elsewhere. Under the 4 categories of "Political and Civil," "War," "Sociological—Economic—Commercial," and "Popular," the compiler has arranged over 300 brief items, such as "The solid South" or "Tell it to Sweeney"; and has traced each to its origin, certain or presumed, with an individual or at least within a milieu. The items are in an approximate chronological order within each category, but are indexed by first words and, when possible, by individuals. The American Treasury, 1455–1955, compiled by Clifton Fadiman assisted by Charles Van Doren (New York, Harper, 1955. xxxii, 1108 p.) has an "Index of Familiar Words and Phrases," but is looser in idea and on a vaster scale. It contains a huge and various collection of pointed statements by Americans, sometimes on American themes and sometimes on things in general, and sometimes running to a page or more, but more often confined to a sentence or two. Dictionary of American Maxims, edited by David Kin [pseud. of David George Plotkin] (New York, Philosophical Library, 1955. 597 p.), is made up of briefer statements—two sentences at most—on things in general; it makes no references and has no author index.