Forgotten Frontiers

t Dreiser; it is about America, beginning with thirty years ago when restless and creative men and women were tearing themselves, and the nation with them, away from the tradition-encrusted soil not only of the Middle West but of the whole country. It recites what Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Masters, Floyd Dell, Lewis, Mencken, Sandburg, and a host of other fighters against oursentimentality and prudery said and thought and did. It records a movement that has for a time liberated us, since it deals, sometimes caustically, sometimes lyrically, with the things of the spirit, the mind, creation, and with suffering and battle. Of the several splendid books written about America recently, this is one of the most stimulating and provocative. Dreiser himself says of the author, "I can imagine no other American I would rather see undertake this book"; and Carl Sandburg, after readingthe manuscript, wrote, "It is a grand treatment of the American scene, with the analytical search and the deliberate accuracy of a Henry Adams plus colors of style and occasional sentences that send up little red and yellow balloons."