Books: Gift-Wrapped History

THE AMERICAN PAST (476 pp.)—Roger Butterfield—Simon & Schuster ($10).

The American Past is history gift-wrapped for readers who ordinarily find the subject unattractive. A picture story of U.S. politics and personalities from 1775 to 1945, the book is presumably (at $10) a carriage-trade item, but Publishers Simon and Schuster expect it to sell like crêpes suzettes.

The book contains 1,000 admirably selected photographs and cartoons, 125,000 words of text. The text and captions are in a lively, LIFE-like manner (Butterfield is an ex-LiFE editor).

The American Past combines the well-documented events of U.S. history with their human underpinnings: Washington borrowing money to make the trip to New York City for his first inauguration; John Quincy Adams bathing naked in the Potomac ; Wilson nibbling crackers while pecking out his war message to Congress; Jackson, when asked if he had any regrets in his life, admitting that he had two: “He had been unable to shoot Henry Clay, or to hang John C. Calhoun.”

The American Past is almost exclusively focused on politics and politicians, sheds only an occasional gleam on the high spots of U.S. social history. But on U.S. politics, it is a first-rate picture book.