The book does not bear the stamp of research; the aim of the work is to defend the Negro and laud those who have championed his cause. The bold claims which Negroes have been making from time immemorial are set forth in brilliant and forceful style. In this respect the book is a success. It goes over old ground, but it does its work well. Although not historical, some valuable facts of Negro history are given from page to page. It contains, however, a few statements which are not essential to the establishment of the Negro's claim to great achievement. It is very difficult to demonstrate to a thinking man the advantage to the Negro of such a contention as the much mooted connection of Alexander Hamilton and Robert Browning with the black race when those men spent their lives and passed into history as white men. Such argument has just about as much bearing on the present as the efforts now being made by certain enthusiastic race leaders to prove that Christ was a black man rather than a Jew. Fraught then with opinions rather than with organized facts adequate to the development of the subject constituting its title, the book must be classed as controversial literature. It may be well to note here, however, exactly what the author means by the "new Negro." The "new Negro," says he, "is not really new; he is the same Negro under new conditions. Those who regret the passing of the 'old Negro' and picture the new as something very different must remember that there is no sharp line of demarcation between the old and the new in any growing organism like a germ, a plant or a race." The "new Negro" then is simply the Negro differently circumstanced. He is ignored by the white man and, therefore, misunderstood. The "new Negro" is living under the handicap of isolation by white men who differ from their former masters who lived in close contact with them. The result is that the white man of today, choosing not to become acquainted with the Negro, has constructed within his mind a person entirely different from what the Negro actually is. The "new Negro" is not treacherous, indolent and criminal as suspected. He "is a sober, sensible creature, conscious of his environment, knowing that not all is right, but trying hard to become adjusted to this civilization in which he finds himself by no will or choice of his own. He is not the shallow, vain, showy creature which he is sometimes advertised to be. He still hopes that the unreasonable opposition to his forward and upward progress will relent. But, at any rate, he is resolved to fight, and live or die, on the side of God and the Eternal Verities." * * * * * _Cotton as a World Power._ By JAMES A. B. SCHERER, LL.D. Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York, 1916. Pp. 452.