American History
A History of the American People to the Civil War. By James Truslow Adams. (Routledge. 18s.) Ma. ADAMS'S History is a popular text-book -for American leaders. Its chief interest for readers on this side of the Atlantic lies in the fact that it provides, at the level of popular understanding, a more objective view of the relations between the American colonists and their mother country than had been given to American youth during the past century. In this respect Mr. Adams naturally reflects the temper of American historical scholarship during the last generation ; but one has only to recall the frequent outbursts of the " patriotic " societies in the United States against the work of leading historians of the country to realize the significance of Mr. Adams's effort to incorporate the conclusions of dispassionate research with the popular understanding by Americans of their own history. He is hardly% less interested in correcting what he evidently regards as popular illusions about the pre- ponderant influence of New England in the making of the new commonwealth and in laying the foundations of American culture. One suspects that, in his desire to chasten the pride of the New Englanders and to do justice to the intellectual and social attainments of Pennsylvania, Virginia and the Carolinas in the formative period of the United States, he underestimates the larger part played by the successive migrations of New Englanders beyond the Alleghanies to the Mississippi and the Pacific coast in extending the philosophy and structure of American institutions. As a history of the American people, Mr. Adams's work covers the social, eco- nomic and intellectual as well as the political aspects of American life, and is perceptibly influenced by contemporary writers who have drawn more freely than conventional his- torians have upon the " news " of each period to make vivid the manners and customs of the people and the issues which excited popular emotions from time to time. The book is profusely illustrated by reproductions of contem- porary documents, advertisements, portraits and cartoons. A second volume, carrying the History from the beginning of the Civil War down to the present time, is announced for publica- tion in the autumn, and, with the present volume, will provide a useful and compact though somewhat perfunctorily written
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