THE MYSTERY OF "A PUBLIC MAN,"

by Frank Maloy Anderson. University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis, 1948, pp. 256, $5.75.

In this fascinating book Professor Anderson takes into partnership his reader in one of the most exciting historical detective stories anyone could imagine. Ever since 1879, when the North American Review published in four installments what was or purported to be a diary by a "public man" written during the Secession Winter of 1860-1861 in Washington, historians have almost without exception regarded the document as an important source for the events of those critical years. Many well-known anecdotes about Lincoln and other famous figures are based on "The Diary of a Public Man." No end of discussion has centered in the question, Who was the Public Man? Professor Anderson, off and on since 1913, has been probing into this mystery. The adventure began, and has been continued, as a part of his larger study of the responsibility for the beginning of the Civil War, on which he is still at work.

I am not going to tell you what Professor Anderson's final conclusions are regarding either the authenticity of the Diary or its author. But I am going to tell you that here is a book which you ought to read if you belong to any one of the following groups:

(1) IE you are perchance interested in the Civil War, in Lincoln, and his contemporaries, you will find in this volume much new light, many shrewd insights, much that will give you great satisfaction.

(2) If you want to see how a skillful historical craftsman really works, to share his adventures in running down clues, in distinguishing between assumptions, possibilities, probabilities, and certainties, to experience concretely and entertainingly what an historian does with the problems of evidence, you will not miss this book. It is a lawyer's book. It is a detective fan's book. It is a book for people who believe there is something in the old adage that truth and fact are more interesting and exciting than faction.

(3) If you were a student of Professor Anderson's, you will certainly not miss this book. It bears from first page to last the imprint of his honest, straightforward, lucid mind; of his disinterested search for the truth, for motives, connections, reasons for this and for that; and of his warmth and mellowness and wisdom.

(4) If you did not have a course with Professor Anderson, then reading The Mystery "A Public Man" will in some part show you what you missed.

Let me, as an historian who has enjoyed for a great many summers the hospitality of the Baker Library, of the Dartmouth historians, and of Hanover, congratulate the College on the publication of the best historical detective story I have ever read or ever expect to read.

University of Wisconsin.