Half-Forgotten Lives

vince all readers of the soundness of their position, none could ask for a clearer exposition of it.

Professor Nye, who is chairman of the department of English at Michigan State University, has given us a series of brief lives of American adventurers, traitors, eccentrics, and scoundrels. Although his very readable essays contribute nothing new in fact or interpretation to American biography, this is a worthwhile book because it condenses into small compass all that one needs to know about his subjects—with the possible exception, that is, of Clement Vallan-digham, rather a bigger man than the others in this book. Several of these Americans have had whole books written about them, and Mr. Nye appends a good bibliography; but life being short, the reader as yet unacquainted with these gentry will be well advised if he contents himself with Professor Nye’s sketches.

vince all readers of the soundness of their position, none could ask for a clearer exposition of it.

Professor Nye, who is chairman of the department of English at Michigan State University, has given us a series of brief lives of American adventurers, traitors, eccentrics, and scoundrels. Although his very readable essays contribute nothing new in fact or interpretation to American biography, this is a worthwhile book because it condenses into small compass all that one needs to know about his subjects—with the possible exception, that is, of Clement Vallan-digham, rather a bigger man than the others in this book. Several of these Americans have had whole books written about them, and Mr. Nye appends a good bibliography; but life being short, the reader as yet unacquainted with these gentry will be well advised if he contents himself with Professor Nye’s sketches.