THIS book has been hailed by the publishers and by newspaper critics as sensational. It is nothing of the sort; and that it has been burdened with superlatives would seem to indicate that publishers have lost none of their old finesse and critics none of their superficiality. The reader, one gathers, is suposed to be startled when Mr. Herbert Agar says, for example, that Washington's sole "job" in 1776 "was to keep an army of some sort in the field, and wait for the English to lose the war;" he is supposed to gasp when he hears that in 1814 "Madison's government... was delighted to be out of the struggle on terms which were not humiliating," that "Grant was the politicians ideal of a President." Unfortunately for the publishers, for the critics, and for Mr. Herbert Agar this too much emphasized realism is not startling. It is merely fact, and the sort of fact which all but high school teachers are able to recognize.

But it would be unfair to judge Mr. Agar's work on any such basis as this. For although he assumes the unfortunate manner, in such cases, of one imparting state secrets, his original intent encompassed far more than a superficial reduction of Messrs. Samuel Eliot Morison and James Truslow Adams. "The People's Choice" was inspired by the logical connection between the problems which confront Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the coronation of Democracy with its owners in 1829. His thesis, conveyed through the apt medium of presidential biography, is briefly this: since 1789, America has progressed through three cycles of governmental control, through oligarchy, democracy, to plutocracy. Democracy, for the West "an inescapable condition, like the weather," swarmed over and engulfed the separate dreams of Hamilton, the Adamses, and Jefferson, leaving instead of plan, an anarchy which found its master in capital. As Mr. Agar sees it, we are faced today with the three alternatives of Dictatorship, Communism, or an enlightened Adams Democracy.

Mr. Agar's analysis can gather few garlands in the name of novelty. It has been taught for years from every enlightened college lecture platform. "The People's Choice," however, may be counted important, for the very good reason that Mr. Agar has told his story simply and well, that he sums up a complicated analysis in terms that can be understood by the average citizen and in a year when such ideas should be common property.

One is inclined to regret that Mr. Agar felt compelled to report with great detail on the early lives of his subjects and hence to compress his commentary into a meagre allotment of pages. But no reader can escape the fact that the author does keen justice to his characters. "Jemmy" Madison, for example, "the withered little apple-John," was "small, quiet, precise... In print he had authority and effectiveness; but he had neither of these qualities as chief executive of the nation;" William Howard Taft was a "genial, unambitious man who never got over the surprise at finding himself president;" Wilson's "chief character-defect... (was) his failure to remember that opponents could be honest, decent men." Here, again, there is nothing new. But in these and other sketches, Mr. Agar shows a detachment and insight decidedly worthy of notice.

In the interests of historical accuracy it is only fair to recall that the author falls into the easy error of ridiculing the Articles of Confederation, that he fails to draw enough attention to the political sagacity of Jackson's bank veto, and that he assumes, without proof, that the rise of capitalism and its shelter, the fourteenth amendment, were carefully prearranged. But these are minor points. Mr. Agar set out to give John Citizen an understanding of his government's position today. He has succeeded admirably. J. P. M.

Out today: "Dolly Gann's Book," Doubleday-Doran, goes on sale today. It is the publisher's claim that Dolly Gann "tells all about the political and social life of Washington, not forgetting, the famous precedence war with Alice Long worth."