1 NOVEMBER 1940, Page 26

CECIL CHESTERTON'S vigorous, opinionated and inaccurate history of the United

States is a valuable addition to the Everyman Library now that Professor D. W. Brogan has added a long introduction and has corrected in footnotes the main errors in the text. It is not a " cheap " book, and it is certainly not a dry book. Professor Brogan writes with justice : " A more learned man would have written a better book if he could have written as well out of his learning as Cecil Chesterton did out of his comparative ignorance. But learned men who write as well as Cecil Chesterton did are rare, and that is the justification for reprinting a book with so many faults—faults far more than compensated for by a few funda- mental virtues."