Books: American Tales

THE HERITAGE OF AMERICA—Henry Steele Commager & Allan Nevlns—Little, Brown—.($4).

Mark Twain once took the trouble to dig out and proclaim at length (in Life on the Mississippi) some comparative figures on America's age. Without whooping it up as Mark did, Historians Commager & Nevins are equally concerned to demonstrate the long, rich past which Americans seldom realize. Collected in this book are about 1,130 pages of documents, from the Journal of Christopher Columbus to Charles Lindbergh's We, which make up a history told by the historical. Samples:

¶After a transcontinental train trip in 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson (his fellow travelers called...