CITIZENSHIP AND CIVIC AFFAIRS,

byHarold O. Rugg '08. Ginn & Co. $1.88.

SOME YEARS AGO Harold Rugg decided it was time to scrap the texts which undertook to teach citizenship through memorizing the Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the constitution. He boldly attacked problems of modern democracy in a new series for the upper grades. They were so different from the old pussy-footing texts that most boards of education shied away from them. Dr. Rugg was called a disturber of the status quo, a parlor pink, a Socialist. But he persevered. As the books sold, newer editions became bolder in tone. This new volume is the best of the series so far. Some people will object to parts of it, for it furnishes an admirable background for Dartmouth's Social Science I, but if its lessons could be grasped by every American child, a long step forward would be taken toward making this country safe for democracy.

The book deals with the changing American family, its falling birth-rate and its rising tide of divorce; with lodges, clubs; with changing city governments. Crossing the Atlantic, Dr. Rugg explains Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini. He traces the history of representative government in America, paying his respects, en passant, to the Founding Fathers. He explains the ward heeler, the city, county, state boss. He shows our government not only as it is, but as it should be. He discusses crime, law enforcement, taxes. He demonstrates how public sentiment is created, how attitudes and prejudices are born. He closes with a vigorous plea for a new type of education, which will teach how the taxpayer's dollar is divided between the boss and the racketeer, rather than how a line is divided into mean and extreme ratio; the rules for choosing a city manager rather than those for writing Latin prose, and the story of Tom Dewey and Jimmy Hines rather than that of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith.