REBELS AND GENTLEMEN

Carl Bridenbaugh '25 and Jessica Bridenbaugh. Reynaland Hitchcock, 1942. 393 pp. $3.50.

THOSE WHO KNOW Philadelphia only moderately well, and have had their curiosity as to how it got that way stimulated by the flood of books and moving pictures about it o£ recent years, will find much to interest them in this new book by the Bridenbaughs. Since this group includes nearly all the citizens of the United States, the book should have a large number of readers, and deserves to have. Following after the earlier "Cities in the Wilderness" which told the story of urban life in the British colonies to the middle of the 18th century, the new volume deals with one city only, in the days when it was not only the largest city in the Empire after London, but one full of a strong and colorful people, who were adding great contributions to the making of our America. It is really the biography of a city in the days of its vigorous youth, and in its story of a splendid era the reader can see why that past has remained so much with the city even today.

Everybody knows that this Philadelphia was the home of Benjamin Franklin, who was colonial America's greatest contribution to the period of Enlightenment. They are little aware of the many other men, tremendously interested and active, whose achievements were only less notable, or of the hundreds who formed the atmosphere out of which the intellectual flowering developed. But great thinking is seldom the product of loneliness, and the story of Franklin has long been incomplete without the story added to it of his Philadelphia.

And this is an interesting story, well told, of the city in the half century before the Revolution. Not at all provincial in spirit, it drew in ideas and culture from Europe and America, and this is clearly described. The chapters on science and medicine, and on the care of the unfortunate, are excellent, and so are those on art and architecture. There are sketches of David Rittenhouse, William Allen, John Bartram, and others, that are skillfully done. There is something about recreation, enough to make us wish that space had allowed more, for even Franklin used to fish on the Schuylkill, and the tradition of splendid eating—and even of Fish House Punchhas not wholly departed. But in sum, the book is added demonstration that America in 1776 was by no means all frontier and log cabin, or farmer. Rather, in no small degree it was fully the equal of the best of western civilization, and those who are interested in a complete picture of the origins of our nation should find time for this book.

The G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, have just published a book of 247 pages entitled Man of Tomorrow—Nine Leaders Discussingthe Problem of American Youth. This volume is edited with prefatory notes by Thomas H. Johnson '23. The volume opens with an introduction, The Lecture in Education, by Allan V. Heely of the Lawrenceville school. Following this are the nine essays, each one of which has a brief introduction by Mr. Johnson. The essays in their order of appearance are: Germany and America 1492-1942, by Professor Samuel Eliot Morison, Statecraft undera Written Constitution, by Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson, America's Responsibilityin World History, by Herbert Agar, The Roleof Prophetic Religion in the World Crisis, by Professor Reinhold Niebuhr, Education inWar Time in a Democracy, by President Baxter of Williams, Literature and the Arts, by John Erskine, Science and Youth, by Professor Earnest A. Hooton, A Free Press in WarTime, by Arthur Krock, and Manners andCivilization by Pearl S. Buck.