Cornell University is fortunate to have as its historian a man of Morris Bishop's talents and devotion. As an accurate record and a work of art possessing form and personality, his book at once conveys the unique character of the early university reflected in its vigorous founder, its first scholarly president, a brilliant and eccentric faculty, the hardy student body, and, sometimes unfortunately, its early architecture and establishes Cornell's wider significance as a case history in the development of higher education. Cornell began in rebellion against the obscurantism of college...