The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 58, July 1954 - April, 1955 Page: 581
650 p. : ill., maps (some col.), ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
book is worth reading, for it is the best extant account of a col-
orful and notorious figure in Arizona history.
J. GILBERT MCALLISTER
The University of Texas
The Western Hemisphere Idea: Its Rise and Decline. By Arthur
P. Whitaker. Ithaca, New York (Cornell University Press),
1954. Pp. x+194-
Professor Whitaker's book consists of eight lectures, afterwards
revised for publication, delivered as the Commonwealth Founda-
tion lectures at University College, London, during January and
February, 1954. The resulting book is a little unusual since it is
more in accord with the tradition of belles-lettres in historical
writing found in Latin Europe and Latin America than in the
United States with its German-shaped scholarly background.
What Professor Whitaker has written is an essay on the history
of an idea, the idea of a Western Hemisphere, somewhat in the
style of Jos6 Gaos and Edmundo O'Gorman's studies on the idea
of the discovery of America. Since ideas are at best tenuous, Pro-
fessor Whitaker might well have followed the Latin style further
by dealing more heavily with philosophy and less weightily with
politics, diplomacy, and economics with regard to his subject.
The Western Hemisphere idea frequently gets overshadowed by
the more robust forms of the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt
Corollary.
The interesting and historically important conflict in America
(all America) between the somewhat isolationist idea of Pan
America and the globalism of the democratic concept is splen-
didly clarified in Professor Whitaker's discussion. A third form
of internationalism in America Professor Whitaker does not
mention for the good reason that it does not involve the Western
Hemisphere idea, yet it should be referred to for purposes of
deepening perspective if for no other. That is Hispanidad, a
cultural international force which has isolated Anglo-America
from Latin America more effectively perhaps than either Pan
Americanism or democratic globalism has ever united them.
Professor Whitaker's book is a valuable treatise on a phase of
American history which few historians of the United States ever581
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 58, July 1954 - April, 1955, periodical, 1955; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101158/m1/674/?rotate=90: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.