BOOKS THAT CHANGED AMERICA

by Robert B. Downs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 1970

Twenty-five meandering summations of the content and impact of landmark books from Common Sense to Silent Spring, admittedly a personal selection but based to some extent on earlier consensuses (the S.R. listing of 1964; the Grolier Club's 100 blockbusters prior to 1900; the Cowley-Smith grouping of 1939). Mr. Downs contends that most of his choices were created by ""great disseminators"" (as per Elmo Roper) who expounded ideas current but latent or inherited from thinkers above. Downs' loose criteria allow him to wriggle out from under dissent over inclusions or exclusions, although his bias is apt to slide from enthusiastic appreciation to a strained and tight neutrality (as he tiptoes, for example, through Smith's The Book of Mormon). Among the selections: the direct marshaling and galvanizing of Paine, Steffens, Carson; applied literary ruminations (Thoreau, Stowe, Bellamy), sociological explorations (Cash, the Lynds, Myrdal), some special works on medicine (a curious offering on gastric juices by a William Beaumont of 1833), law and economics. And there's Holmes and Adams and Cardozo and, and, and, up to #25. A goodly company in a bland and inoffensive presentation.

Pub Date: March 6, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION