A Sense of History: The Best Writing from the Pages of American Heritage

In his introduction to this rich anthology, Dobell, editor of American Heritage, speaks of ""the desire of Americans to know what happened in history to people like themselves.'' These selections amply satisfy that desire. Culled from the first three decades of the magazine founded in 1954 by a group of journalists and historians are distinguished, well-told stories: ``The Great Vanderbilt Will Battle'' by Frank Kintrea mingles ugly legalism with flaring humor; Louis Auchincloss subtly follows ``Henry Adams in the South Seas'' after Adams's wife's suicide; Malcolm Cowley inspects ``The Hawthornes in Paradise.'' Historians share the territory with novelists, journalists and social critics in an informal history of our nation from its founding to Watergate, in a voyage of exploration. BOMC selection. November 14