WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN: A Profile

William Jennings Bryan, congressman, journalist, lawyer, and regularly a presidential candidate for the Democratic party, is also something of a dolt and in the words of Mencken ""a zany"" and ""a peasant."" This series approaches his infinite variety and to a degree complexity by using contributions solicited from fourteen historians from which the reader may, or may not, be able to ""assess the life of one who was sui generis in American political history,"" the editor's comment. The essays are of unusually high literary and historical quality, and fully half of them are authored by contributors capable of turning out the sort of in-depth study of Bryan that he deserves. He was certainly a multifaceted figure particularly suited to this kind of profile in contrasts.