THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEWtimes, but the spirit of the man and his faith in ideas and progress so pervade the whole work that one can but give a rousing cheer for its youthful octogenarian author.
State Teachers College, Milwaukee, Wisconsin MARIAN SILVEUS
A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge. By William A.White. ,(New York : Macmillan Co., 1938. xx 460 pp. Frontispiece. $3.50.) This is something more than a biography. Mr. White has written a brilliant narrative of the rise of economic America from the 1870's down to the crash of the Coolidge bull market in 1929. The author sets down his hypothesis early in the volume, namely, that in the strange turbulent years that brought one era to a close, and opened another, a man lived in the White House, who was a perfect throw-back to the more primitive days of the Republic a survivor of a spiritual race that has almost passed from earth. Much is made of Coolidge 's New England background rather his Vermont background his environment, his inheritance, and his early training. Plymouth, Vermont, was nearer to the Revolutionary War period, when Coolidge was born, in 1872, than it was to the rest of nineteenth century America. He was born in the very midst of a primitive, political, economic, and social democracy. Every man about him was literate ; there were no rich, no poor among his early acquaintances. He grew up in a Puritan democracy. The local blacksmith was his hero. The handcraft age still prevailed. Coolidge was familiar with the old flintlock rifle, the stonemason's hammer, a home-made hoe, a brush scythe, a loom, a flax-wheel, a reel, a frow, a mallet, a hand-made trough for making and catching sap, and other tools and implements that were used by the Puritan fathers of the early seventeenth century.After graduating from Amherst, he moved to Northampton, and made his first venture in politics in 1896, campaigning for McKinley. In 1906, he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. His colleagues soon discovered that they could load him down with routine work, and he " Cinderella like," performed his menial tasks willingly, efficiently. Like Cinderella, he always began with the pots and pans, and in the end, rode away in the fairy coach. He took each political job in order -mayor of Northampton, state representative, state senator, president of the state senate, lieutenant-governor, and then governor. Calvin Coolidge knew politics, make no mistake about that. Sixteen times his name had appeared on the ballot, and sixteen times he won. When he was elected vice president in 1920, he enjoyed for two years no political worries. Then came Harding's death and his succession to the office,
