Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/864

 850 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

long discussion of corporal punishment ; suggestion ; imitation,

A notable feature of the book is 115 pages containing over 600 class exercises for discussion. These are arranged according to chapters averaging about forty to each chapter. The author says "only those exercises and problems have been chosen which upon trial have proven to incite observation and effective reflection on the part of students." Marginal analysis, about one and a half pages of fine-print resume at the end of each chapter, and a select classified list of reference readings are useful phases of the book.

The volume is adapted to the ordinary parent or non-technical student; in this respect it resembles G. Stanley Hall's Adolescence and Youth and one feels that it possesses about the same degree of finality or reliability. It reads like the common-sense observation of a careful observer of children. One finds himself saying "Let me see, is that so?" and feels that his own reflection on his limited experience is as valid as the author's statement. However, the book is a useful non-technical treatment of topics on which little reliable scientific data exists.

S. Chester Parker

di, Documentary History of American Industrial Society. Edited

by John R. Commons, Ulrich B. Phillips, Eugene A.

GiLMORE, Helen L. Sumner, and John B. Andrews.

Prepared under the auspices of the American Bureau of

Industrial Research, with the co-operation of the Carnegie

Institution of Washington. Preface by Richard T. Ely,

and Introduction by John B. Clark. Cleveland: A. H.

Clark Co., 1910. Vols. I and II, "The Plantation and

Frontier, 1649-1863," by Ulrich B. Phillips.

Nothing is more difficult than the reconstruction of the life of a

people of a past era. Indeed it is difficult for students and publicists

to understand the life around them, so great is the variety of

thought, purpose, action, and manner of those who enter into the

make-up of a nation. We are in the midst of modern and mediaeval

civilizations all the while. The state of Illinois furnishes today

illustrations of the evolution of Anglo-Saxon men and women from

the conditions of Henry II to those of Fifth Avenue. From time

immemorial men have tried to describe and explain "the people,"