Books: Jeremiah on H Street

HENRY ADAMS AND His FRIENDS (797 pp.)—edited by Harold Dean Cater—Houghton Mifflin ($7.50).

In his declining years, looking dourly out on the world, Historian Henry Adams thought he was watching the simultaneous decline of civilization at large. A good deal of how he felt he managed to get into The Education of Henry Adams, and more is to be had in the two large volumes of his letters edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford. It might seem like mere academic piety to add further evidence. But readers who miss Henry Adams and His Friends will miss: 1) a hitherto unpublished assortment of more...