A HISTORY OF AMERICAN ECONOMIC LIFE,

by Edxcard C. Kirkland' 16. F. S. Crofts and Cos., N. Y1939. p.810. #5.00.

In this study Edward C. Kirkland, Frank Munsey, Professor of American History at Bowdoin College, has improved one of the better texts on American economic history. The original volume published in 1932 was readable and showed abundant evidence of thoroughgoing research. This revision retains the virtues of the original while it adds important materials. The various topics dealt with in the earlier study have been brought up to date and valuable new materials have been added in sections on foreign trade and the business cycle.

As its central theme the book develops the economic growth of America from colonial times to the present. Its plan is broad containing interesting and valuable excursions into biography, sociology, and politics when these are related to the economic story. For a study of American economic history it possesses one rare virtue by avoiding a common sin. It is interesting and readable because the text is not loaded with statistics and graphs. There is not a single one of those graphs that we economists love so much and the reader curses so fervently. And page after page presents itself with no tons of coal, bushels of wheat, and miles of railroad. Statistical data are there but to serve the study and not to dominate it.

For the college student and for the general reader Mr. Kirkland's book appears as the best in the field. It is a large volume and its size may discourage those of us who have no teacher prodding us on. It will, however, pay good dividends to us for the time we invest in it.