inS BOOK is written to a thesis or at least on a theme， l have read<br > innumerable books and articles ranging from general surveys to<br >special monographs， all having to do with American development<br >from 1865 to 1915--that is to say， from our emergence out of the<br >mingled stupidity and glory of the Civil War to our somewhat reluc-<br >tant entrance into what used to be called the Great War. For us the<br >sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 made participation in it inevitable.<br >We came out of the Civil War a great military and economic power，<br >strong， unpredictable， and parochial. Then on the whole we turned<br >our gaze inward under a succession of presidents who at the best<br >were high-class mediocrities and at the worst U. S. Grant. Eventually<br >William McKinley， a mediocrity also but (save for Benjamin Harri-<br >son) the only chief magistrate in the period distinguished for exces-<br >sive piety， proved to be both religious and indecisive. Under him we<br >stumbled overtly into imperialism， and under Theodore Roosevelt<br >we discovered we were a great world nation， a potent member of the<br >concert (unfortunate term) of the Great Powers. The difficulty with<br >most of the literature dealing with these fifty years， so far as l have<br >read it， is that it does not for the most part address itself to any gov-<br >erning philosophic concept.<br > We became industrialized. We undertook， and almost wrecked our-<br >selves on， a series of fatuous policies for the post-helium South. We<br > passed in literature b-ona the standard classical American authors，<br > mainly romantic， to another set of writers who afterward became<br > standard--such as Henry .James， William Dean Howells， and Mark<br > Twain--men who as often "Europeanized" as not， who essentially<br > abandoned the older doctrine that American writing should be<br >