AMERICAN LITERATURE FOR COLLEGES.

By Kingsbury Badger '29. Harrisburg, Pa.: The Stackpole Press, 1954- Twovolumes. Vol. I, 618 pp. $4.75; Vol. 11, 687pp. #5.50.

After a modest nine-page introduction Professor Badger proceeds to provide the student of American literature with a collection of "Anlerican writings that reveal the various phases of thought and expression through which we in our part of the world have passed and are still passing."

Professor Badger starts admirably, I think, with a selection from the American Indians, the Aztec epic, "The Song of Quetzalcoatl"; and ends, again admirably, with a portion of William James's essay, "The Moral Equivalent of War."

The writings are chosen and arranged so as to arouse in the student a desire to earn his heritage and to make some beginnings toward the formation of his own philosophy of life.

For Professor Badger American literature means any writing which expresses a way of life that has prevailed at some time in America and which has been written by persons who participated in such a way of life.

He begins with the Pre-Colonials, which means the Amerindians; the Colonials; Early Nationalists such as our old and good friends Ethan Allen, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson, writers whom certain "solons" would ban; has large selections of the trans-cendentalists and the romanticists; and later the writers of the frontier, the realists, and so on.

Any such groupings are, of course, bound to be somewhat strained, but Professor Badger's are as good as any I have seen.

I would think that these volumes would be most helpful in any course in American literature which uses an anthology.