AMERICA GOES TO PRESS

Says our reader -- ""a must book for everyone who can read"". I'd curtail that to include ""everyone who likes to read newspapers"" -- for this is the sort of scrapbook an inveterate newspaper reader, with an eye to relative importance of news items might have collected, if he could have lived through the story of a growing nation. It isn't history -- it's simply ""news"" -- a once-in-a-century newspaper with such headlines as The Battle of Lexington, The Surrender of Cornwallis, The Fall of the Alamo, The (Erie) Canal Celebration, Ho! for California, The Ocean Telegraph, Insurrection at Harper's Ferry, etc. It includes first hand news stories of famous and petty incidents; it prints in full some gruesome contemporaneous stories of murder and sudden death; it covers the purchase of Alaska, the Great Chicago Fire, the opening of the transcontinental railroads, Custer's last stand, the raids of Jesse James, the blizzard of '88, the Johnstown flood, the San Francisco Earthquake (excuse me, S.F. -- should we say ""fire?"") There are human interest stories -- there are editorials. Intimate close-ups of favorite characters. Journalists will follow it with interest for its implicit value as showing changes in technique. Contemporary comment seems amusing -- in many instances -- today. All history was once news. All journalism is current history. This book dramatizes both aspects. Perhaps you guess we think it's a swell book.