Paths to the American Past (review)

190CIVIL WAR HISTORY the Friends of the University of Iowa Libraries are to be commended for the publication of this collection of letters. Tommy R. Young Media Support Center Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Paths to the American Past. ByJ. R. Pole. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Pp. 330. $13.95.) In these essays, Professor Pole explains why he chose to study democracy and equality in American society. These previously published articles, book reviews, and unpublished pieces also display the breadth and depth of his historical interests. In addition, he has brought these articles and reviews together to attract a large general audience to the study of the past. The first section centers on the Revolutionary generation, particularly the relationship between revolution and the growth of representative government. In a biting review essay on recent books about slavery and the American Revolution, Pole shows how he came to separate the study of majority rule from the egalitarian principle. The second section, which he devotes to the American Civil War and its results, displays little more than a cursory knowledge of the historical work on the period. His essay on Lincoln and the British working class is repetitive and without focus. "Lincoln and the American Commitment," obviously an afterdinner talk, confuses Lincoln's nationalism with his idea of the federal government's powers. Thebook review comparing the career of Booker T. Washington to one of the "children of pride" fails to cohere. In the third section, critiques of other historians' works, Pole gives both the general reader and the professional insight into his own view of the uses and abuses of the past. He reprints "Historians and theProblem of Early American Democracy," which criticized historians' simplistic analysis of democracy. He warns against the historical determinism in the new and new-new history, which distort the past. The detailed analysis of Daniel Boorstin's books is perhaps the finest new piece in this collection. Pole's dispassionate critique of that brilliant historian is an example of historiographical analysis at its best. This book is indeed a path to the past, at least to the past relationship between freedom and property, democracy and representation. When Pole deviates from this theme—as he often does—the path becomes less clear. In the middle section, where he seems unsure of his ground, the essays degenerate entirely. However, the essays on democracy and the elusiveness of equality show the general reader and the professional how a master historian grasps the complexity of human behavior. Jon L. Wakelyn The Catholic University of America ...