Over There

This second volume in Vaughan's ( Dawn of the Century ) American Chronicles series follows the surviving characters of the first book from the sinking of the Titanic , which kills off another of the four golden college boys around whom the books revolve, into WW I and the onset of Prohibition. Along the way, Vaughan manages to include such historical personages as Cpl. Adolf Hitler, Maj. Dwight Eisenhower, Pres. Woodrow Wilson and Chicago racketeer Johnny Torrio. These cameos, designed to give the book an air of historical authority, actually do nothing but underline the fact that all of Vaughan's characters, real or imaginary, talk exactly alike. His plotting has become even more predictable and mechanical than in the previous volume, and his sense of historical irony can be judged from a black character's remark to Eisenhower: ``Sure. We'll have a Negro chief of staff in the Army someday. And I suppose you also think someday we'll fly to the moon.'' Aside from one mildly amusing variation on contemporary catastrophe jokes (a bibulous passenger on the Titanic wisecracks about stopping to get more ice for cocktails), this series seems to be dead in the water. (June)