Unlike the work of many pseudo-reformers, Dr. Allen’s book is comprehensive in its scope in that it not only reveals existing conditions, but it indicates how these conditions may be remedied and tells of the efforts thus far made to apply the proper remedies. After pointing out that the best index to community health is the physical welfare of school children, Dr. Allen compares the European method of _doing things_ at school with the American method of _getting things done_. No brief review can do justice to a work so inspiring that to be instantly effective it needs but to be read widely. It is filled with material that should be particularly at the command of every teacher, if not of every parent, in the land. Its especial interest to teachers of civics lies in its analysis of the relation of public health and its consequent economic conditions to organized government and to the body social. [“Civics and Health.” By William H. Allen, secretary, Bureau of Municipal Research, with an introduction by William T. Sedgwick, professor of biology in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston: Ginn & Co., 1909. Pp. xi-411.] American History in the Secondary School ARTHUR M. WOLFSON, PH.D., Editor. A STUDY OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. The Declaration of Independence is, in every way, an ideal document for study in a secondary school. Every student in the class is undoubtedly familiar with it; he has heard it quoted, in whole or in part, on numberless occasions; he thinks he knows all about it, and yet the teacher can easily show him that it contains vast stores of ideas which up to the present time he has never even suspected. No document in all American history is so easy of interpretation: the language is clear and simple; the phraseology is direct and unencumbered; the document is divided and subdivided so that anyone who takes the trouble can easily analyze it. The Declaration itself is to be found in almost every school history, and the sources and secondary authorities which illustrate it are easily accessible and not too difficult for the ordinary secondary school student. Literature.