THE AMERICAN STORY.

Volume I, Youth; Volume II, Maturity. By Robert E. Riegel'35h and David F. Long '39. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955. 522 pp.; 544 pp. $6.00 pervolume.

Textbooks tend to be pretty much alike, but the first thing which makes these two volumes stand out from others is that they are the joint work of the colleague who occupies the next office and a former student of his at Dartmouth. One is bound to feel a particular interest and pride in this undertaking.

The next thing that strikes the eye is that the break between Volume One (Youth) and Volume Two (Maturity) comes at 1877, rather than at the conventional 1865. The authors explain that ending the first volume short of the later date is to them "like stopping a hurdle race when a man has jumped the last bar but before he has breasted the tape." In this change Riegel and Long are in line with a growing tendency, the more welcome to many teachers because of the growing length of the story since the days of Reconstruction. When the late Professor Lingley first published his Since the Civil War (1920) his volume covered about fifty years. The same span would now be about ninety years, and one hardly needs to be reminded how busy and complex these added years have been.

Opening these volumes one notes the absence of any illustrative material, whether portraits or cartoons or diagrams. Some teachers will miss seeing an engraving of the First Bank of the United States in Philadelphia, or a wood-cut of "Desolation in the South," or the charming and well-bustled young lady working a Sholes model typewriter of the vintage of 1872, or even a portrait of Woodrow Wilson. To this reviewer, however, this is not too great a loss, particularly when he does find a large number of excellent maps which are said to include "almost all the places mentioned in the narrative," and which come close to doing just that.

Perhaps the chief distinction of these volumes is their presentation of a broadly-based and well-rounded picture of American life. College texts in American history have tended to be chiefly political and economic in emphasis, with a few social and cultural facts inserted here and there. Riegel and Long have attempted a somewhat more synthetic treatment, though organization for student use has also led them to put much of the social and cultural material in such special chapters as "Training a New Generation," "Attaining Culture," and "Improving Mind and Morals."

In line with their leaning as teachers, the authors include colorful thumb-nail biographical sketches of the leading characters in the story, and they are particularly effective in summing up causes and results of various developments and in presenting broad interpretative analyses of major trends. The volumes read very well and offer on the whole a lively and interesting survey of "The American Story." One finds a few of the slips and minor errors which appear in any first printing and which are easily corrected in a new edition. The work as a whole is well and carefully done, and the volumes should prove very useful in college survey courses.