The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 19, July 1915 - April, 1916 Page: 314

                                
The Southwestern IHistorical Quarterly

illustrated by the fact that more than twice as much space is
given to the preliminary quarrels than to the war itself. The
volume goes no further than the treaty of peace, 1783.
While Professor Becker's book will be a genuine pleasure both
to the general reader and the student, it is not likely to be wholly
successful as a, text-book because it is frequently lacking in that
definite concrete information which is an essential prerequisite to
the formation of generalizations of any value and which there-
fore must form the basis of any successful college. course.
CHAS. W. RAMSDELL.
Union and Democracy.       [The Riverside History of the United
States, II. William   E. Dodd, Editor.]    By Allen John-
son, Professor of American      History, Yale University.
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.        [1915.1   Pp. xii,
346, xvi. $1.25 net.)
Expansion and Conflict.    [The Riverside History of the United
States, III. William   E. Dodd, Editor.]    By William    E.
Dodd, Professor of American History, University of Chi-
cago.   (Boston:   Houghton    Mifflin  Company.     [1915.]
Pp. xvi, 329, xxiv. $1.25 net.)
Together these two little volumes survey the history of the
United States from the close of the Revolution to the end of the
Civil rWar, with the election of 1828 as the dividing line between
them. They are designed primarily as text-books for college
classes, but are likely to find their greatest field of usefulness
among general readers desiring a brief, readable, interpretative
discussion  of the period. Professor Johnson's task has been
essayed so often and from    so many different angles that little
opportunity for originality remained. It is a good, clear narra-
tive, but, except for a slightly greater emphasis on the economic
influences which shaped our early constitutional development,-
probably a more or less unconscious response to Beard's somewhat
spectacular thesis,-his book has little to distingish it from
others of approximately the same compass. Chapter XIV, analyz-
ing the motives and influences of the Westward Movement, and
Chapter XVI, describing the New Democracy that came into its

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