It is hardly necessary to say that this is a new edition, the second, of Edward G. Bourne’s excellent book published in 1904 as a volume of the American Nation Series under the editorship of Albert Bushnell Hart. Professor Keen of Jersey City State College has written a concise introduction. He says that some of the American Nation Series books have stood the test of time, and that one of these durable works is that by Bourne. Keen cites Charles Gibson’s laudatory evaluation of the Bourne book which identifies Bourne as “the first scientific historian of the United States to view the Spanish colonial process dispassionately and thereby escape the conventional Anglo-Protestant attitudes of outraged or tolerant disparagement.”
Keen’s commendable supplementary bibliography has as its purpose the addition of some selected new and pertinent sources and studies published since 1904. Barnes and Noble are also to be commended for republishing the Bourne study. I think that the Bourne book is basic in Latin American history.