Books: Loaded History

THE CONTOURS OF AMERICAN HISTORY (513 pp.)—William Appleman Williams—World Publishing ($7.50).

America's grandchildren, says Khrushchev, will live under socialism. Professor William Appleman Williams of the University of Wisconsin can hardly wait—although socialism to him has a different meaning than to the Soviet boss. After a long and transparently loaded survey of U.S. history, his book asks a final question in academic gobbledygook: Is the nation really forced into a choice between "government by a syndicalist oligarchy relying on expansion" (roughly, the U.S. Progressive-New Deal movement) and "government by a class-conscious industrial gentry"...