This book is a breath of truthful air in recent history writing. Gone are the speculations and unsupported theories. Gone also is the garbage of modern history departments. The author deals with the recent speculation about Jane Addams. She does not ignore it. It is nice to find a book that deals intelligently with the subject. It is also nice to see that the author has carefully researched her subject. Historians of today are doing the world a great disservice. But the cultural wars will continue. Facts, provable facts, do matter in the end. The author talked to people who knew Jane Addams. In the First World War, Jane Addams was closely watched by various intelligence agencies of the federal government and of local government. If there was dirt to be picked up, these vacuum cleaners of that subject would have found it and published it. The reports of these agencies are available on microfilm in the Jane Addams Papers published by University Microfilms.

This book is 329 pages long. It has 63 pages of notes, 9 pages of index, and 10 pages of well selected photos.

It is a good book, about a good person. Jane will be long remembered for the "quality of her thinking, for her rightness as an interpreter of individuals to themselves and of social groups one to another." So wrote her first biographer, James Linn. I think this book continues that image of Jane Addams.