Keller and Laura Bridgman Mr. Macy says : "Laura always remained an object of curi ous study. Helen Keller became so rapidly a distinctive personality that she kept her teacher in a breathless race to meet the needs of her pupil, with no time or strength to make a scientific study." This difference is apparent when one compares The Story of My Life with Laura Bridgman, Dr. Howe's Famous Pupil and What He Taught Her, by Maud Howe and Florence Howe Hall (Little, Brown and Company).—Perhaps the most difficult American biographv to write is one of Washington. Norman Hapgood has essayed this task, and in his George Washington (The Macmillan Company) has given us the picture of a man. courageous, self-sacrificing, human, which bears the ear marks of truth.—Especially for "young Americans" is a recent volume, Daniel Web ster (Little, Brown and Company), contain ing an introduction on "Webster, the Ameri can Orator," by Professor Charles F. Rich ardson, of Dartmouth College, Edwin P. Whipple's essay on "Webster as a Master of English Style," and about twenty of Webster's speeches. The small portraits scattered through the book are abominable (e.g.. Franklin, p. 102, J. Q. Adams, p. 129). —Of deep interest at the present time is Dr. K. Asakawa's volume on The Russo-Japanese Conflict, its Causes and Issues (Houghton, Mifflin and Company). In the author's view it is a "dramatic struggle between two civil izations, old and new, Russia representing the old civilization and Japan the new." Dr. Asakawa's account of the diplomatic strug gles which have centered around Korea and Manchuria since the intervention of the Powers in 1895, at the close of the ChineseJapanese War, is of great value to the student of international law and of Eastern affairs.-—American History and its Geographic Conditions, by Ellen Churchill Semple (Houghton, Mifflin and Company), is a care ful study of American growth and develop ment. "The most important geographical fact in the past history of the United States (says the author) has been their location on the Atlantic opposite Europe: and the most important geographical fact in lending
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a distinctive character to their future history will probably be their location on the Pacific opposite Asia."—Professor Albert Bushnell Hart's The Foundations of American Foreign Policy (The Macmillan Company) reprints from various magazines eight articles, all related to the subject indicated in the title to the volume. Like all of Professor Hart's work these studies are the result of careful research; but we must dissent from his statement (p. 167) that "The annexation of territory and acceptance of protectorates which result from the Spanish war are . . . not signs of a new policy, but the enlarge ment of a policy long pursued."—In The Loyalists of the American Revolution (The Macmillan Company), Claude Halstead Van Tyne tells the dramatic story of the perse cution and banishment or death of the most conservative element in the community at the time of the Revolution.—Vigorous and suggestive is Brooks Adams' The Netv Em pire (The Macmillan Company), "an at tempt (to quote the author's own words) to deal, by inductive methods, with the consoli dation and dissolution of those administra tive masses which we call empires." In two hundred pages he traces, from the standpoint of trade, the march of human progress from the earliest Egyptian civilization to the pres ent time.—In Our Benevolent Feudalism (The Macmillan Company), W. T. Ghent sets forth what he believes to be, in the United States, "an irresistible movement— now almost at its culmination—toward great combinations in specific trades; next towards coalescence of kim'1"0 -""«tries, and thus toward the complete integration of capital," all of which is resulting in "a renascent Feudalism," "based upon the same status of lord, agent, and underling,1' as was the old Feudalism.—Irrigation Insti tutions, by Elwood Mead ("The Citizens' Library," The Macmillan Company), is an intelligent study of "the economic and legal questions created by the growth of irrigated agriculture in the West." While not in a strict sense a law book, the discussion of the various statutes bearing on irrigation is an essential part of this volume.—One of the recent volumes in "The Citizen's Li
