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A Check List Of New Books

December 2024
4min read

Johnny Appleseed: Man & Myth , by Robert Price. Indiana University Press. $5. A biography of an American folk hero, John Chapman, known to all as “Johnny Appleseed” for the work he did in clearing land and planting seeds throughout the Middle West.

Indians of the Plains , by Robert H. Lowie. McGraw-Hill Book Company. $4.75. A handbook on the culture of the first inhabitants of the Western Great Plains, richly illustrated by 105 pictures and diagrams.

George Washington: Patriot and President, Vol. VI , by Douglas Southall Freeman. Charles Scribner’s Sons. $7.50. The last of Dr. Freeman’s opus, completed before his death. It deals with Washington up to the age of 61, his travels in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the South, and his becoming the country’s first President.

Houses Virginians Have Loved , by Agnes Rothery. Rinehart & Company. $7.95. A book of houses, dating back to Colonial times, that represent our American heritage. Illustrated with 100 photographs.

Shadows in Silver , by A. Lawrence Kocher and Howard Dearstyne. Charles Scribner’s Sons. $7.50. This book presents a record of Virginia from 1850 to 1900 in contemporary photographs taken by George and Huestis Cook, plus pictures from the Cook Collection.

Benjamin Franklin and a Rising People , by Verner W. Crane. Little, Brown & Company. $3. A short biography of the public career of this many-sided American.

The Coming of the Revolution, 1763–1775 , by Lawrence Henry Gipson. Harper & Brothers. $5. An authority on the Eighteenth Century British empire examines the causes of the American war of independence. A volume in the New American Nation series.

Spies for the Blue and Gray , by Harnett T. Kane. Hanover House. $3.50. A round-up of the men and women who served as spies, North and South, in the Civil War.

Beyond the Hundredth Meridian , by Wallace Stegner. Houghton Mifflin Company. $6. The story of John Wesley Powell who, having conquered the waters of the Grand Canyon, directed the development of the American West.

Alexandra Gripenberg’s A Half Year In The New World , translated and edited by Ernest J. Moyne. University of Delaware Press. A titled foreigner’s view of America in the late 1880’s.

The English People on the Eve of Colonization, 1603–1630 , by Wallace Notestein. Harper & Brothers. $5. This addition to the New American Nation series studies the character of the English people at a time when many Englishmen were making a fresh start in the New World.

Florida Fiasco , by Rembert W. Patrick. University of Georgia Press. $5. Turbulence along the Georgia-Florida border, before and during the War of 1812.

The Life of Abraham Lincoln , by Stefan Lorant. McGraw-Hill Book Company. 256 pp. $3.50. A short illustrated biography of Lincoln, comprehensive and well-written. Mr. Lorant is a master of the art of marrying pictures and text to bring his subjects to life.

Profile of America , edited by Emily Davie. Thomas Y. Crowell Company. 415 pp. $8.50. A fine compilation of original writings from American history. Beginning with a report of Leif Ericsson’s voyage, taken from an old Norse saga, it traces the American story in the letters, speeches and diaries of those who witnessed it. Bryan Holme has made an excellent choice of accompanying photographs and the publisher has had the wisdom to reproduce them by sheet-fed gravure printing instead of by the dead-gray offset process which is often thought good enough for picture books.

The Jews in America: A History , by Rufus Learsi. World Publishing Co. $6. A factual history of American Jewry documenting the important events and important people during the three hundred years of their life in North America.

A Study of History , by Arnold J. Toynbee. Oxford University Press. Vols. VII–X. $35. The four latest volumes of Dr. Toynbee’s series covering: Universal States, Universal Churches, Heroic Ages, Contacts Between Civilizations in Space—In Time, Law and Freedom in History, The Prospects of the Western Civilization, and The Inspiration of Historians.

Realities of American Foreign Policy , by George F. Kennan. Princeton University Press. $2.75. Based on four lectures delivered at Princeton University, this book gives a cogent analysis of America’s position in the world today by a veteran diplomat.

The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid , by Pat F. Garrett. University of Oklahoma Press. $2. A new edition of Sheriff Garrett’s “authentic” story of the Kid, first published in 1882, with a definitive introduction by J. C. Dykes.

Atoms in the Family , by Laura Fermi. University of Chicago Press. $4. A look at the atom bomb from a new angle—the feminine—by the wife of a pioneer atomic scientist.

Annie Oakley of the Wild West , by Walter Havighurst. The Macmillan Company. $4.50. A warm and careful study of a girl whom Will Rogers called “a greater character than … a rifle shot.”

The Wilderness World Of John Muir , with an introduction and interpretative comments by Edwin Way Teale. Houghton Mifflin Company. $4.50. A well-arranged anthology of the writings of a true naturalist, illustrated by Henry B. Kane.

Commerce of the Prairies , by Josiah Gregg. Edited by Max L. Moorhead. University of Oklahoma Press. $7.50. First published no years ago, this classic of the Santa Fe Trail and life on the prairies remains fresh and vivid, and has been ably edited by Mr. Moorhead.

The Last War Trail: The Utes and the Settlement of Colorado , by Robert Emmitt. University of Oklahoma Press. $4.50. A scholarly account of how the Utes were broken and western Colorado turned over to the white men.

Susan B. Anthony: Her Personal History , by Katherine Anthony. Doubleday & Company. $6. A new biography of the leader of the woman’s right movement in America during the Nineteenth Century.

Bent’s Fort , by David Lavender. Doubleday & Company. $3.95. A report on the life of the traders and trappers of the Southwest in the Mid-Nineteenth Century.

The Roosevelt Family of Sagamore Hill , by Hermann Hagedorn. The Macmillan Company. $5. The story of Teddy Roosevelt, his wife and six children, and their life in the house they loved so well at Oyster Bay, L.I.

Yankees and God , by Chard Powers Smith. Hermitage House. $6.50. A cultural and religious history of present-day Yankees and their forebears.

The Eagle, the Jaguar and the Serpent , by Miguel Covarrubias. Alfred A. Knopf. $15. A monumental survey of the Indian art of North America, with 12 pages of full color and 200 photographs and drawings.

America’s Music , by Gilbert Chase. McGraw-Hill Book Company. $7.50. A history of American music from the psalms of the Puritans to proponents of the twelve-tone system.

Rebel Rose , by Ishbel Ross. Harper & Brothers. $4. The biography of Rose O’Neal Greenhow, glamorous and dangerous woman spy in the service of the American Confederacy.

The Private World of William Faulkner , by Robert Coughlan. Harper & Brothers. $2.75. An expansion of a series of articles which appeared in Life a year ago on the Nobel Prize winning American author.

Emily Dickinson—a Revelation , by Millicent Todd Bingham. Harper & Brothers. $3. An interpretation of Emily Dickinson’s great love in her later years by the daughter of Miss Dickinson’s first editor, Mabel Loomis Todd.

The Buffalo Hunters , by Mari Sandoz. Hastings House Publishers. $4.50. An account of hunting the American bison on the Great Plains until the 1880’s.

 

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