Teachers, parents, and children who have enjoyed and profited from this author's three world biographies of Lincoln, Washington, and Augustus Caesar will be predisposed toward this book, but they should be forewarned that this does not have the same type of horizontal construction that won the other books so many followers. Its subtitle is America's Heritage from the Ancient World and it seems likely that the gap between 476 and 1776, which the author is apparently leaving for subsequent volumes, will give younger children the sense of being left suspended in time. The material is well told, but the book should find its widest use when it is read with an adult close by. the author's drawings loom large, engulfing the text in some instances, and many of them are cluttered with maps, diagrams and charts that need adult elucidation.