THE HOURS AND THE AGES

Subtitled ""A Sequence of Americans"", this highlights individuals who typified certain trends and developments of America's creative energies from the mid 18th century to the middle of the 19th. Mr. Nicholas' philosophy of history, implicit here, is that creative energy receives its expression through individuals, and yet through the course of history it is something above and beyond them. He takes for his study Elizabeth Lucas Pinokney, who managed her father's Carolina plantations; George Whitefield, revivalist awakener; the Rev. Charles Chauncy whose theories gave birth to Unitarianism; often misunderstood Thomas Hutchinson, Massachusetts governor; Sam Adams, political boss and rabble rouser; the great democratic statesman, Thomas Jefferson; fighting man and democrat, Andrew Jackson; the transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller; imperialists and republicans, Senator Thomas Benton, his daughter Jessie, his son-in-law John Fremont, explorer and dreamer. A somewhat different slant on history and trends of the century covered- and good reading.